


Squad Ghouls

by Wintermoth



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ghostly Trio, Halfa Trio AU, I cannot believe in the year 2020 I am actually finally writing Danny Phantom fic, Shenanigans, This is not a Crackfic, also featuring expansion on canon topics/lore hell yeah, anyone who appears in the show is fair game but i am not tagging all of them, certain details of this au are based off the halfa au by juicyreptile on tumblr, come for the lols stay for the plot, crossposted on ffnet, eventual Amethyst Ocean but its not the focus, just yknow half dead ones, kids being kids, literally all the ghosts, power mishaps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25723984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wintermoth/pseuds/Wintermoth
Summary: Yo Danny Fenton he was just 14 when he and his friends went into his parent's very strange machine and fckin died i guess.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton/Sam Manson
Comments: 120
Kudos: 237





	1. Who Ghost There?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny wondered what it said about him and his life that the fact she turned into a giant meat monster wasn’t the most surprising part of that whole encounter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this is not a crackfic by any stretch and you can absolutely blame the Phandom discord for the summary. This is gonna be a rewrite of the show with all three of the kiddos as halfas. While some events will play out as they do in canon, others will be wildly different because there's three of em and their entire situation is different because of it.
> 
> Beta'd by [FiveRivers/Marsalias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsalias/)

"Okay, one more time. It's called the _what_?"

Danny resisted the urge to sigh and stared at the grains of wood less than an inch from his eyes. Crystal clear, even though the arms enclosing his head against the picnic table eliminated almost all light coming in. Apparently, this was something he could do now. "The Fenton Finder."

"And it led them right to you?"

"Yep."

"While it wasn't even finished?!"

"Yep."

Tucker made a noise that sounded like someone had shoved an eraser up his nose and Danny listened to him typing furiously on his PDA.

"Well…that bites," Sam declared after a moment of silence. "What are you gonna do about it?"

Danny raised his head, frowning. "Uh, 'we', Sam. I think you meant 'we.'"

"Hey, I'm not the one who shares a house with the ghost hunters."

"I mean, what should I do?" he snapped, throwing his hands in the air. "Drop it out of the sky so it breaks? Or, I don't know, throw it through the portal the next time it opens? They'll just make a new one. _After_ they spend a whole day raving about ghosts sabotaging their equipment." With that, his head dropped back to the table with a _thunk_.

"Dude, relax, it'll be fine. They'll probably just keep thinking it's broken and give up eventually." Tucker said. "I mean, it's not like they'd attack their own kid."

He laughed as if the mere thought were ridiculous but Danny, well. Danny wasn't sure. And, boy, did he hate it. He peeked at Sam, out of habit more than anything, and knew from the slight scowl on her face that she was thinking along the same lines as he was.

"Do you think…" Danny paused, raised his head, and curled his fingers against his biceps. "Do you think maybe we _should_ tell them?"

The words had barely left his mouth before Sam scoffed. "Why? Parents don't listen! Even worse, they don't understand! Why can't they accept me for who I am!?"

Tucker stared at her, completely unimpressed, and Danny frowned. "Uh, Sam. We're talking about my parents."

"Oh, right. Me too."

Danny sighed. "I mean, come on. It's been a month since the accident and we barely have any control."

"Speak for yourself, man." Tucker folded his arms. "I haven't fallen through my bed in a week. That's progress."

"The fact that's considered progress isn't exactly a _good_ thing," Sam pointed out.

Tucker smirked. "You're only saying that because you haven't made any."

She folded her arms, her usual scowl deepening into one of genuine distaste. Unlike the boys, she hadn't been falling through her bed. Quite the opposite, actually. She kept waking up on the ceiling, despite her best efforts to keep herself firmly in her bed. Danny had suggested she strap some weights to herself to keep her down but apparently an extra thirty pounds meant nothing to a power capable of lifting an entire human body into the air. Short of literally tying herself to the bed, she was running out of options. She was lucky her parents hadn't barged into the room while she was sleeping, but with them, it was only a matter of time.

"For your information, I woke up in my bed this morning."

"Lucky you," Danny muttered. His legs were getting a bit sore from being pressed into the edge of the bench so he tried to adjust them, only to find that he couldn't move his feet. He leaned back so he could peer under the table and groaned at what he saw. "Uh, guys?"

"Yeah?"

"My feet are in the ground."

And, then, because that was what his life was these days, his butt fell through the bench and he hit the ground with a solid _thud_.

Mocking laughter rang through the air, informing him that his fall (and hopefully _only_ his fall) had not gone unnoticed by other students spending their free period before lunch outdoors. He recognized Paulina's high-pitched laughter among the rest and felt his face heat up.

Under the table, Sam aimed a surreptitious kick at Danny's shin with her boots and Danny hissed, recoiling. Fortunately, it was enough for his feet to pop free from the earth and he sat up, dusting a few errant blades of grass from his arms. Pulling his legs out from under the table, he climbed back into his seat and sighed.

"At the very least, maybe they could come up with something to get us to stop doing _that_. I mean, come on, if my parents can invent something that turns us—" he glanced at the nearby table where most of the laughter had come from. No one _seemed_ to be listening but with something like this, one couldn't be too sure. He lowered his voice to hiss, "—y'know, then maybe they can do something to change us _back_."

"Or it could kill us," Sam pointed out. "Y'know. For real."

Danny's forehead hit the table again. Knowing his parents, Sam was probably right. The fact that they hadn't completely died in the Accident was pure luck, as far as Danny could tell. Not that he knew much about ectoplasm or ghost dimensions or portals.

Somewhere behind him, the bell rang, announcing second lunch, and Sam clapped her hands together once with an excited hiss.

"What's got you so excited?" Tucker asked.

"Oh, nothing much. Remember that program I mentioned I was pushing for the school board to try?"

Danny raised his head. "You mean the lunch program?" He frowned. "I thought you'd dropped that." He'd barely been able to function normally with all this ghost weirdness, he was surprised Sam found the wherewithal to finish her one-woman campaign against the school board. Then again, it _was_ Sam….

"What program?" Tucker asked warily and narrowed his eyes. Sam merely swung her legs over the bench and rose to her feet. "What'd they do to the meatloaf? Sam, _what did you do to the meatloaf?!_ Sam!"

Danny sighed and, ignoring Tucker's frantic yells, followed Sam into the school. They were probably in for a week of salads, tofu, veggie wraps, fresh fruit, and whatever else. It couldn't be _that_ bad.

* * *

It could.

* * *

Her name had been Dorothy, Before. This was a fact, nothing more. None of the children ever called her by her name. She was simply the Lunch Lady and that had been fine for her. It was all about the children and lunch. Making lunches for the children, serving lunches to the children. Hundreds of children, thousands. Countless faces filing by her station day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Every month the same menu, each meal reoccurring exactly every two weeks, without fail, following the menu she herself had written long ago. Were there minor deviations? Perhaps. Special weeks. Special days of pizza. But those were _scheduled_. Those were _planned_. They were a _menu_.

And so it had always been. Until now.

She could _hear_ the distressed sounds as the children beheld the food on their trays. She could feel their shock, their disgust.

And, like nothing had ever before, it called to her.

* * *

It was grass. On bread. With dirt. Actual dirt. Or maybe not actual dirt, Danny didn't think the school would go _that_ far, but it sure as hell looked like it!

"Don't you think this is a little extreme, Sam?" he asked

The satisfied, dare he say, _smug_ , smile on his best friend's face said no. No she didn't.

No one noticed the teacher's approach until he was suddenly there. "Ah, Miss Manson." Lancer's hand came down on Sam's shoulder and she jumped, startled, and he withdrew his hand. "Sorry. The school board wanted me to personally thank you for ushering in this _welcome_ experiment to our cafeteria."

Tucker's eye twitched as Lancer approached. "Meat...near…!" he mumbled and then actually sniffed Lancer.

Lancer, not at all put off by the teenager's sudden movement, which was decidedly _canine_ , merely held his hands up nervously. "No, no, the rumors about the all-steak buffet in the teacher's lounge are completely untrue."

Danny might have believed it. If the man hadn't chosen that exact moment to raise a toothpick to his lips. Tucker made a strangled sound and Lancer made his escape.

"Thanks again!" he muttered to Sam and hurried off.

"Yeah," Tucker groused, "thanks again for making us eat _garbage_ , Sam."

"It's not _garbage_ ," she retorted, holding her turfwich aloft. "It's recyclable organic matter."

"It's garbage," the boys deadpanned.

Sam shrugged. "But it's your lunch, so. Eat up."

Tucker glared down at his plate as if he could transform it into meatloaf through sheer will alone. Danny didn't think that was the sort of thing a ghost could do, though. After a long moment of boring holes into it, Tucker pushed his tray towards Sam and propped his elbow on the table and sulked.

"My all-meat streak is fourteen years strong and I will _not_ be breaking it for _this,"_ he declared with a tone of finality.

Danny looked down at his spoonful of, well, _turf_ , and wondered if it would be worth it just so he didn't spend the next few hours hungry.

He would not, however, get a chance to decide, for at that very moment, _cold_ swelled from his center, shooting upwards with a rush of air, and the reflexive exhale which followed was visible. At the same moment, Sam slapped her hand over her own mouth to hide the dark smoke which would follow a feeling that she described as 'like swallowing a chili pepper in reverse' alerted her to the sudden arrival. Tucker's fingers spasmed like they'd been shocked, which was pretty much exactly what it felt like, and he quickly curled them into fists against his chest.

"Oh no," Sam coughed behind her hand.

Tucker glanced between them. "You guys felt that too?"

Danny opened his mouth to confirm but was interrupted by something soft but firm colliding with the back of his head. It wasn't painful, but it got his attention, which is exactly what the boy screaming his surname wanted.

Sam was already halfway out of her seat before Danny even turned to see Dash, butthead in chief of the Casper High student body, came storming over with a plate of mud in hand and a glare that promised pain. Par the course with Dash, really. What _wasn't_ was the awareness of a ghost within their immediate proximity.

"I ordered three mud pies!" Dash shouted. "Do you know what they gave me!? THREE. MUD. PIES. With _MUD. FROM THE GROUND!_ " He narrowed his eyes. "All because of your girlfriend!"

"She's not my girlfriend!"

"I'm not his girlfriend!"

Dash seized the front of Danny's shirt and hefted the smaller boy clean into the air. He paused to set the plate down on the table nearest him then grabbed the front of Danny's shirt with his other hand.

"These are the best years of my life! After high school it's all downhill for me!" He shook him once. "How am I supposed to enjoy my glory days eating mud?!"

"Actually, it's topsoil," replied Sam, not helping.

"Whatever!" Dash snapped, practically throwing Danny back into his table. He snatched the plate from the table beside them and slammed it forcefully down in front of Danny. "Eat it," he growled, "all of it."

Danny sighed and picked up his plastic spork, prepared to once again simply give into Dash's demands to save his own skin—

Ice swelled and Danny's eyes flicked towards movement in his peripheral. A plump woman in a pink uniform glided past the food window. From this distance, it was difficult to make out any details, except her movements were far, far too smooth to be anything but flight. Sam had both hands over her mouth and was looking around frantically but her back was to the ghost and Tucker was too busy watching Dash to notice Danny's pointed look.

Thinking fast, Danny did the first thing which popped into his mind. He grabbed the plate, leaped to his feet, and yelled "GARBAGE FIGHT!" Then he threw the whole thing directly into Dash's face.

What followed was chaos. Pure, unadulterated, chaos.

Though Sam was prepared to go down swinging in the crossfire defending her meal choices, Danny quickly pulled her down to the relatively safety of floor level and gave her a long, tempering look. The three of them crawled as quickly as they could through the throngs of students having the time of their lives in glorious, muddy combat, towards the kitchens. Dash screamed a vow of vengeance and Danny winced but otherwise ignored him.

They slipped into the kitchen unseen. It was surprisingly empty of human staff, and, given that he'd heard no screams before his sense went off, Danny figured something else must have drawn them away. This ghost, though, she was front and center, fussing with a bowl of salad that was, for some reason, not out for the students to choose from. She was a plump woman who, according to Tucker's whisper, somewhat resembled his grandmother. She wore the same pink outfit as the current lunch staff, albeit somewhat faded, including a pair of yellow gloves and white apron. Her short white hair hung loose around her neck, meaning either she'd died before hairnets became a requirement, or simply didn't care to spend her afterlife wearing one. Though why or how anyone could be so devoted to school lunches as to come back wearing the uniform was utterly beyond Danny. As was why she wasn't haunting, like, a bingo hall or something else old people found fun.

"Hello children, can you help me?" she asked sweetly as the door swung shut. She floated towards the trio about a foot off the ground, gesturing with her hands as she spoke. "Today's lunch is meatloaf, but I don't see the meatloaf. Did someone change the menu?"

"Yeah," Tucker replied and jerked his thumb in Sam's direction. "Her."

"Dude," Danny muttered.

The Lunch Lady's sweet smile lingered half a beat longer and then she was suddenly all flames, sharp teeth, and red eyes. "YOU CHANGED THE MENU!?" Her voice reverberated with the fury of a thousand aggrieved culinarians and she began to swell in size.

It was at that moment the three teenagers realized they were _prooobably_ in over their heads.

"THE MENU'S BEEN THE SAME FOR _FIFTY YEARS."_ She let out a roar so loud it caused everything not bolted down to rattle ominously.

Danny let out a wordless yelp and darted in front of Sam and Tucker as if to shield them with his own body.

"Yeah, thanks, I feel _sooo_ much safer," Sam muttered, pushing Danny's arm down. "We doin' this or what?"

"'Or what' sounds good!" Tucker replied, his voice several octaves higher than usual.

Sam scoffed. "Fine! Stay here and hide then! _We'll_ take care of this." She looked at Danny and her bravado…wavered. "You ready?"

He gulped and nodded. "Lets go ghost!"

She grabbed his hand just as he reached inwards towards the cold place deep inside where everything that was Other waited. It answered his call. Light flared around their midsections and swept across their bodies in identical rings. Comfortable clothing gave way to jumpsuits, black hair turned white, and the dull colors of human eyes gave way to otherworldly glowing.

If the Lunch Lady was surprised to see the two of them transform, she didn't show it.

"Back me up, Danny!" Sam's newly echoing voice ordered. She shot into the air in a blur of black and white. Danny followed a bit more slowly. Something about letting Sam take the lead on this just seemed like a _bad_ idea.

"Listen, you!" his best friend shouted at the vengeful spirit. "That menu you're so fond of is from the _fifties_! This is the twenty-first century! There is nothing wrong with change!"

"That's not for you to decide, you ungrateful brat!" the ghost snapped and the row of stoves began to rattle ominously. " _I_ control lunch! Lunch is _sacred_! Lunch has _rules_!"

"Uh, not really?" Danny said and then winced as she turned her flaming eyes on him. "I-I mean—it's not that big of a deal? Maybe?"

Y'know, for a kid who grew up hearing about ghosts day and night from his parents, you'd think he'd remember certain key facts about how ghosts worked. Like how all ghosts were supposed to have that one thing which kept them going past their natural lifespans. That thing which became everything to them. For this woman, somehow, that _thing_ was apparently school lunch.

He should have kept his mouth shut.

The Lunch Lady let out another unholy roar and this time her cry was echoed by the ovens as they began to spew unnatural green fire. At the same moment, her glowing hands hurtled a dozen plates directly at the half-ghost children. Sam jerked herself upwards and out of the way, leaving Danny to frantically try and catch them.

"Would you get your butt in gear?!" Sam screamed at their 'teammate', still human on the ground.

"Okay, okay!" he cried, clenching his fists and screwing up his eyes. For all of his boasted progress earlier, Tucker actually had the least control out of any of them. Sure, Sam was levitating at least once an hour and Danny had the tendency to go intangible when he got nervous, but at least they could transform at will. "Come on," he muttered. "Come on. Think ghostly thoughts! Come _on_."

"TUCKER!" Danny screamed.

He peeked one eye open just in time to see a line of plates coming straight for his head. Tucker yelped, throwing his hands up to protect his face, and wished he was _anywhere but here_ —

* * *

And suddenly found himself crashing into a table somewhere very much not there.

Somebody screamed.

* * *

Danny and Sam stared at the spot where Tucker had been an instant before, their sixth senses helpfully supplying what their others failed to grasp. Tucker was gone. He'd physically moved, though neither could tell how far, only that he was no longer in the room. Instantaneously. The plates shattered harmlessly against the wall near the door. A moment passed and they glanced at each other in confusion. Danny shook his head quickly and turned to face the Lunch Lady once more.

She _snarled_ at them. "Lunch is the lifeblood of the student body! Lunch gets you through the day! And you need protein for that!"

"And there are plenty of plant-based alternatives which are better!" Sam shot back, fists clenched at her sides. "For someone so obsessed with feeding kids, you sure don't know a thing about—"

"Uh, Sam?" Danny interrupted but it was far too late.

"Oh, you think so?" The Lunch Lady spat. "We'll see about _that_ , child!" Still flaming green, she rose into the air and disappeared through the ceiling.

Sam growled and started after her but Danny caught her by the wrist. "Sam! Would you give it a rest?!"

She whirled on him, golden eyes blazing with fury. At the same moment, the row of ovens started snarling, and the two ghost teenagers whipped around in surprise. They weren't just spewing unnatural fire anymore, oh no, that crazy bat had somehow brought them to _life_! Their oven doors had disappeared completely, leaving gaping, fanged maws which spewed flames, and beady eyes. With eyebrows.

When they lunged, Danny and Sam screamed in unison. Thinking quickly, or perhaps not even thinking at all, Danny went intangible and flew through the nearest wall, pulling Sam with him. Intangibility was apparently beyond the skills of the sentient ovens and they collided with the wall in a cacophony of metal and ungodly screams. Danny popped back into tangibility just in time to hit the floor in the hallway behind the kitchen.

They flipped and rolled a few times as the excess momentum wore off and ended up in a tangle of glowing limbs on the floor.

Danny blinked at the locker three inches from his nose…and then a grin stretched across his features as he realized what he'd managed to do. On command, no less. "Ha!" he laughed, scrambling to his feet. "It worked!"

Sam, on the other hand, was too busy fuming to be impressed. "Seriously?" she growled as she pushed herself to her feet. " _This_ is the thanks I get for thinking like an individual? I swear, I'm gonna—"

"Sam, stop." He grabbed her upper arms and prayed the seriousness in his tone would get through to her. "Trust me when I say, there is no way you are going to win this argument with her. Lunch is her 'unfinished business' or something. All you'll do is tick her off even more than you already have."

Her golden eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'm sorry, which one of us told her lunch isn't sacred?"

"Okay, any more than _we_ have. Happy?"

"No. And where's Tucker?" She looked around. "I thought he'd just gone invisible or something but—"

There was a sound like thunder from above and the whereabouts of their missing friend suddenly was the last thing on their minds.

* * *

It didn't seem fair to Danny that a normal, forty-something teacher was able to haul him to the office like a misbehaving dog when _he_ was the one with the super powers here but that really was just his life now.

"Mr. Lancer, please," Danny tried for the third time, "you have to listen to me. Sam—"

"Will be joining you both shortly, don't you worry, Mr. Fenton."

"But she—wait. Both?" Danny perked up, despite himself. "You found Tucker?"

Mr. Lancer's scowl turned annoyed. "'Found' is not exactly the word I would use."

He didn't offer anymore information and Danny knew better than to press him for details. He glanced at Dash over his shoulder and the quarterback grinned nastily at him. Danny whipped his head around quickly, heaved a sigh, and allowed himself to be directed into Mr. Lancer's office. Where, if his odd sixth sense was correct, Tucker was waiting.

Sure enough, when the door opened, there he was, perched contritely on a plastic chair in front of Mr. Lancer's desk. He had a few strange stains on the front of his shirt but other than that, he seemed entirely unharmed. He was staring intently at the door and though Danny saw a flicker of relief at his arrival, Tucker pressed his lips together when his eyes confirmed what his sixth sense must have been telling him: Sam wasn't with them.

"Where's Sam?" Tucker whispered as Danny was dropped into the empty chair beside him.

"As I told Mr. Fenton, she will be joining you shortly."

"B-but, Mr. Lancer," Danny stammered, "she didn't—I mean—whatever you think's going on here, Sam didn't have anything to do with it. Really."

Lancer fixed him with a stern look and walked around his desk to a large file cabinet. He pulled open the drawer labeled 'freshman'.

"Where did you go?" Danny hissed as softly as he could manage.

Tucker gulped. "Um…."

"Tucker Foley," Mr Lancer read aloud. "Chronic tardiness, talking in class, repeated loitering by the girls locker room…."

The fact that Tucker didn't so much as react to any of those marks on his record spoke volumes in Danny's opinion. He really _hadn't_ just gone invisible. But what else was possible?

"Danny Fenton," Lancer went on and Danny nearly winced. "Thirty-four dropped beakers in the last month, banned for life from handling all fragile school property, but no severe mischief before today. So, gentlemen…" He dropped their files on his desk and smiled. Neither one of them bought it for an instant.

" _ **Why did the two of you conspire to destroy the school cafeteria?!**_ "

Danny would've liked to say he didn't recoil, but, well.

"We didn't!" Tucker yelped at the same moment Danny argued, "Dash started it!"

Lancer drew back. "Not according to the other students."

"But he threw—"

"Four touchdown passes in the last game and is thereby exempt from scorn. You two, however, are not." Lancer folded his arms.

Tucker clenched his fists. "But Dash—"

"Also did not throw himself onto the buffet table in the teacher's lounge."

Danny blinked. Turned his head towards Tucker. Glanced at the stains on his shirt. Tucker met his gaze and shrugged sheepishly.

"I'll be mapping out your punishments when I return." Mr. Lancer announced and walked over to the door. "I advise you both to sit here and consider your actions in the meantime. Mr. Baxter, guard the door."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Lancer, sir," Dash replied and threw a mean smirk in their direction the moment Lancer's back was turned.

The door slammed shut and Danny rounded on his best friend. "You did what?!"

"It wasn't like I meant to!" Tucker cried, leaping to his feet. "One second I was in the kitchen with you guys and the next, I'm face first in the steak buffet in the teacher's lounge! Which was totally real, by the way. I have no idea what happened! But _where_ _is_ Sam?!"

"The ghost took her," Danny explained, scrubbing his hands across his cheeks. "We were fighting in the hallway. I accidentally transformed back to normal and got swatted like a fly. By the time I was back up, they were gone, and then Lancer had me."

Tucker groaned. "This is my fault, isn't it?"

"At this point, Tuck, I think it's all our faults."

"We have to find her."

"Duh," Danny replied and reached for his ghostly half once more. It responded to his call without issue or hesitation and where was _that_ when he'd needed it earlier?

His sixth sense told him Sam was somewhere below him but beyond that, it was difficult to say. As far as he could tell, she was on the move, and fast, which meant she'd probably managed to free herself…and was probably being chased. Frowning, he flew over to the panel of security cameras Lancer had on the far wall. He didn't expect the ghost herself to be visible on them but maybe they could find some kind of clue or….

Or maybe he could see Sam fly by right in front of his eyes with a familiar glob of meat in hot pursuit. That worked, too.

"There she is!" Danny pointed to the screen labeled BAS-2 then whirled around, expecting to see Tuck in his own ghostly form, ready to go. But he was just standing there. Human.

"Come on, we gotta go!"

"I–um–well you see, the thing is—"

"Tucker!" He nearly shouted, glanced furtively at the door, then lowered his voice to a loud whisper, "Would you please just change already!"

"I can't! I haven't figured out how!"

Danny stared, nonplussed. "Seriously?"

"Yes!"

"It's been a month and you still—oh crud." He could hear Lancer coming back. "We'll talk about this later. Can you at least go intangible?" Tucker nodded and Danny grabbed his hand. "Good. Hang on!"

They both turned intangible and Danny pulled them down into the floor just as the door to Lancer's office swung open. Whatever his reaction to their disappearance would have been was lost as they sank beneath tile, stone, piping, and wiring to the basement below.

* * *

They found Sam dodging chicken legs in 'BAS-2', which turned out to be some sort of meat locker. Tucker had a bit of a moment when he realized what had been lying beneath their feet this whole time but, thankfully, was pulled back to the task at hand when Sam went hurtling by.

"What took you guys so long?!"

"Lancer," Danny shouted after her then had to duck to avoid a sirloin.

" _YOU!_ " The Lunch Lady hissed and both boys whirled around. Tucker yelped and promptly became intangible to avoid a barrage of hamburger patties. Danny, uncowed, leaped into the air and jabbed his finger at the ghost's face.

"Would you knock it off?! We don't want the menu changed anymore than you do—"

"Hey!" Sam protested from somewhere across the room.

"—but this is not how you solve anything!

To his utter shock, the Lunch Lady slowed to a halt. She floated a few feet away, eye-level with him, and narrowed her eyes. Though pieces of assorted meats continued to swirl and swam around her, after a long moment, the flames emanating from her skin diminished, and so did she.

When the Lunch Lady had come to deliver her reckoning, she had expected to find some interloper in her place. Some _other woman_ wearing _her_ uniform, feeding _her_ students. Oh, there was one, to be sure, but she hadn't been in the kitchen when the Lunch Lady arrived. She'd tacked on 'abandoning her post' to the list of the woman's crimes (the first of which was existing) then went about looking for the meatloaf. She hadn't expected to learn that a mere child, not the interloper, had somehow convinced the school board to change her menu. (That was not to say they were off the hook. In the end, it was the adults who had the final say in how things went around here, this she knew well.)

And she certainly hadn't expected to find three young ghosts in residence at her school!

She folded her arms and considered the two boys in front of her: one still intangible, and the other trying is hardest to look intimidating (and failing spectacularly). The girl was…somewhere. Close. She had quite the mouth on her but apart from being disrespectful and rude, she wasn't fighting back. None of them were. And the Lunch Lady wondered.

"You kids are…new, aren't you."

The intangible kid's eyes popped open and he and the floating boy glanced at each other.

"Th-this is our first semester," the intangible boy replied. She scowled at him and he shrank back.

The floating boy drifted to the side, placing himself between her and the other, she noted. Despite this, his voice was hesitant when he asked, "Do you mean new ghosts?"

The Lunch Lady inclined her head.

"Um. Yes. Ma'am. Yes, ma'am."

Well at least one of them had manners.

Her scowl returned. That certainly explained why they weren't fighting back. It was probably taking all their energy to maintain enough control over these human kids whose bodies they were riding around in. More like as not, they'd fallen through a natural portal and had gotten stuck. But that gave them no right to _invade her school_ and _change her menu_. Not that she'd had a chance to claim the school, as such, but now with that stable portal nearby, it was hers for the taking! These children, no matter how old they were, had only just arrived. They had no claim on that which had been _hers_ for fifty years!

But, they were young. Someone had to teach them the way of things.

"Alright, sweeties," she crooned, clasping her hands together. "You're absolutely right. There's no need for violence. I'm sure we can work this whole mess out."

The boys stared at her. Further down the aisle, the rude girl's head peeked around one of the boxes.

"You…what?" the floating boy squeaked.

"Obviously there's been a terrible misunderstanding," she went on. "I don't want to fight you! We could even help each other!"

Slowly, the floating boy lowered himself to the ground by his friend whose own body was returning to tangibility. The rude girl narrowed her eyes suspiciously and didn't come down from her perch. That was annoying but, no, no, this would do for now.

"You see, children, this is _my_ school. For fifty-two years I worked here, serving lunches to you kids. Why, I'm the one who designed the menu you still eat today! Or _should be_ ," she hissed and threw the rude girl a look which was returned with equal venom. Brat. But no, no. Calm. "And this also happens to be the place where I died, which makes it mine. Unless…" she paused, frowning. She hadn't considered this. " _You_ died here as well?"

"Uh, no ma'am," said the floating boy, whose legs had dissolved into a wispy tail the color of his jumpsuit.

"Wonderful! Then there's no reason for us to fight! I don't want to hurt you kids, I only want what's mine and for things to be as they should be!"

"But it's our school," the grounded boy protested. "We go here!"

She narrowed her eyes at him and this time the anger swimming through her refused to be fully quelled. "You lost that right when you changed my menu, children."

"B-but we didn't! _I_ didn't!" The boy placed his hands on his chest. "I _love_ meat! I love meatloaf day! And so does Danny!" He pointed to the floating boy.

The Lunch Lady tisked but considered the boys once more. Neither of them had outright attacked her and, really, she couldn't blame them for being defensive of what they thought was theirs. So long as they learned their place, she could, perhaps, permit them to attend classes here…. After all, neither would be stepping on her toes if all they wanted to do was attend classes.

"Perhaps—" But then the rude girl floated out from behind her boxes and put her hands on her hips. A challenge. And her anger, like boiling soup left unattended, bubbling viciously, swelled towards the surface. "That one," she growled, failing to notice the way the floating boy tensed once more, "isn't welcome here."

"Yes," the floating boy interrupted and began to rise into the air once more. Another challenge. "She is."

The Lunch Lady's eyes flicked to the self-proclaimed meat-lover. So did the floating boy's. He glanced between them for a moment and then puffed out his chest. "Yeah! We're a package deal!"

Well, then. That was that.

* * *

Danny wondered what it said about him and his life that the fact she turned into a giant meat monster wasn't the most surprising part of that whole encounter.


	2. Ghoulash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How many days and hours had that lady spent in that very position, making that same goulash recipe from memory, humming to herself to pass the time? It was kind of sad, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!! Thank you for all the support so far! I hope you guys are ready cos this is gonna be a fun and wild ride!
> 
> I'm Wintermoth on tumblr and you're absolutely allowed to come yell at me about this story!

Danny cracked open the front door to his house and peered inside. The way he figured, there was no way Mr. Lancer hadn't already called his parents. However, just because he'd _called_ didn't mean the Fentons had _answered_. They didn't have a phone down in the lab and sometimes they went days without checking the house voicemail, assuming the phone hadn't been gutted for parts again.

His parents were waiting in the entryway. Which, y'know, figures.

"Oh, hi sweetie!"

Or perhaps not.

"H-hi Mom, hi Dad," he replied nervously and opened the door, revealing Sam and Tucker behind him, whom his mother greeted with a _little_ too much emphasis to her usual cheer for everything to be normal.

Danny's eyes flitted around the room for anything potentially dangerous or out of the ordinary. The muffled whirring of a vacuum cleaner drew his attention down the hall, where he spotted his sister in a losing fight with the Fenton Xtractor. Wasn't hard to guess what had happened there, but why? Danny frowned. He considered helping her for exactly one second before deciding Jazz probably stood a better chance against that thing than he did and simply headed for the stairs.

"School was fine, nothing to report," he lied. "We'll be up in my room doing homework and stuff."

A lie which might have been believable if a single one of them had a backpack.

He ignored his parents' gazes as they hurried up the stairs and hoped his friends had the sense to as well. Neither of them had been very keen to come over to his house ever since the Accident and, honestly, he didn't blame them. It wasn't even the proximity to the portal which bothered them, it was his parents. Danny knew exactly how they felt. There was something…unnerving looking into the eyes of people who dedicated their lives to hunting the very creature you'd become.

They felt better once the door to Danny's room was closed.

He slumped face first onto his bed and sighed loudly. He knew without looking that the body that dropped down beside him was Sam's.

"Jeez," he grumbled, "who knew flying for our lives would be so exhausting?"

"Don't forget fighting meat monsters and phasing through walls," Sam added, her voice muffled. There was a rustle and then she said, clearly, "and carrying dead weight."

"Hey!" Tucker protested. "I helped!"

She scoffed. "Yeah, barely! What's with you? Why didn't you change?"

"Because he can't," Danny muttered.

"You _can't_?!" The bed wobbled as Sam hopped onto her hands and knees. "Since when!?"

"Since the second or third day!" Tucker exclaimed.

Sam let out a long, wordless groan of frustration and smacked something. Probably her forehead.

Tucker sighed, folded his arms, and dropped down into Danny's desk chair.

"Okay, ignoring everything else for a second here, why didn't you tell us?" Sam asked. Danny lifted his head in time to see Tucker shrug wordlessly.

"Tuck, come on." Danny propped himself up on his arms. "Whatever it is, it can't be _that_ bad. We're all struggling here."

"And we're never going to get any better if we don't help each other," Sam added.

Tucker glanced at them, then out the window, and sighed. "'Cause it was the _first_ thing either of you figured out. You remember those first few days. I could barely stay in either form for ten minutes. So it's not like I _can't change_ , it just won't work." His frown deepened into a pout.

"You were going intangible just fine earlier," Danny pointed out. "And the…whatever the other thing you did was. Teleporting?"

Sam sat back on her heels and gawked. "That's what that was?!"

"Apparently."

"Cool."

A small smile tugged at Tucker's lips. "I guess. Be cooler if I could control where I ended up."

"Why, where'd you end up?"

Danny grinned. "Teacher's lounge. Right over the all-steak buffet."

Sam let out a noise that was halfway between a scoff and a laugh and shook her head. "How the hell did you explain that one?"

Now Tucker was really grinning. "Well, nobody _saw_ me appear. They probably think I snuck in and then threw myself at the buffet face first."

"Yeah, that tracks."

"Right?"

"Oh my god," she cackled. "I thought those stains were from the meat monster. Please tell me you destroyed the buffet."

Tucker heaved a sigh. "Such a waste."

"Um, we're kind of off track here," Danny pointed out.

"Oops, sorry," Sam said without an ounce of remorse."Where were we again?"

"Tucker can't transform."

"Oh, right." Her mouth twisted thoughtfully. "Well, what have you tried?"

Tucker shrugged his shoulders. "Just about everything I can think of, honestly. I know my ghost half is _there,_ I can feel it, I just can't… grab it."

"It's not about grabbing it," Danny said.

"Well, then, what do you two do?"

Danny and Sam glanced at each other. It wasn't something easily put to words, even for each other.

"It's like…there's something cold here," Danny began slowly, placing his hand over his heart. "But it's not something I'm always aware of unless I'm looking for it. Like a heartbeat but cold."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, "except it's warm for me. What about you, Tucker?"

Tucker's lips twisted thoughtfully. He looked down at his chest and then closed his eyes. A few moments passed in silence except for the sounds of their breathing and a gentle hum coming from somewhere downstairs.

"It isn't hot or cold," Tucker finally said. "It feels…sharp."

"Sharp?" they echoed and glanced at each other once more. Danny shook his head.

"Yeah." Tucker opened his eyes and his expression fell a little. "Yours aren't?"

"Not…really, no," Sam said slowly.

Danny shook his head. "Not at all."

"Helpful," Tucker muttered. "Maybe that's why I'm having trouble. I'm different than you guys."

"We're all different," Sam pointed out. "But it doesn't seem that difficult. The power's there, waiting to come out. You just have to want it to."

Danny nodded and then froze. Was it really that simple? "Wait a second," he said slowly, "do you think maybe that the reason you can't transform is that you don't really _want_ to?"

Tucker grimaced. Bingo.

"Aw, Tuck." Danny sat up, bringing his legs around so he could sit on the edge of his bed closest to Tucker. "How come?"

Tucker took a deep breath and exhaled a frustrated groan. "See, that's just it! Today, in the kitchen, I was _trying_ to transform! I wanted to help you guys but it wouldn't work!"

"Wanting to help and wanting to go ghost aren't the same thing," Danny pointed out. "I mean, I'm no expert here, but there doesn't seem to be any trick to getting any of our powers to work except wanting them to." He glanced at Sam for confirmation and she nodded. "You managed to teleport and go intangible earlier."

"Yeah, but that was to protect myself." Tucker looked down, dejected. "I guess that's what I really wanted, huh?"

Sam floated off the bed and landed on her knees in front of him. Peering up into his eyes, she gave him one of her rare, genuine smiles. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to protect yourself, y'know. _And_ ," she added with a hint of excitement, "if I'm right, that's what this is all about."

"What do you mean?"

"Like you said, those first few days after the accident, you couldn't stop transforming. It didn't matter where we were or what we were doing. You had no control. I'll bet what you really wanted then was to stop transforming altogether. Am I right?"

Danny's eyes widened. Tucker chewed on his lip thoughtfully.

"If that's the case," she went on, "then, in theory, all you have to do is start wanting to transform again and it should work. Eventually."

"Yeah, and _then_ what, Sam? What if I go back to like I was before? I won't be able to leave my room! Never mind actually go to school or anywhere else."

"Well, you can't stay like this," she said firmly and rose to her feet. "Being afraid of yourself definitely isn't healthy. And besides, you never know. I mean, we're all making progress with our powers. I only floated in class once today," she added, chin lifted in pride. "And Danny didn't fall out of his chair. Or through it."

Sam extended both her arms towards Danny as if he were Exhibit A for well-adjusted ghost boys.

Danny decided not to mention what'd happened at breakfast.

"I mean…I'll try," Tucker mumbled.

Sam lowered her arms to her sides. "And we're here for you, though, no matter how long it takes you to figure it out. Right Danny?"

"Absolutely," he agreed. "There's just one small problem: we don't have time to wait for Tucker to get himself straightened out." Tucker's shoulders slumped but Danny pressed on. "There's still a ghost at school and we've got to do something about it, pronto."

Tucker wrinkled his nose. "I mean, do we _have_ to?"

"Yeah, Tuck, we do. What do you think's gonna happen if we try to go back to school tomorrow? The moment she sees us, she's gonna flip out again. People will get hurt, maybe even killed! It'll be chaos! My parents will get involved."

Scowling, Sam leaned against the edge of Danny's desk. "So, what do we do about it? We can barely fight and unless you want me to, I don't know, cook her with my hair, we don't exactly have a lot of options."

Jazz came stomping down the hall, halting their conversation. Danny heard her door rebound off the wall with an impressive _**thud**_ and slam shut with equal force a moment later.

Danny winced. "I think my parents might have accidentally turned the Xtractor on her."

"Accidentally?" Sam muttered.

"Oh, c'mon, Sam, they wouldn't do it on purpose!"

"Well, they certainly weren't helping her."

"Danny didn't either," Tucker pointed out.

Danny snorted and shook his head. "As the only one in this room with a sister, trust me when I say you cannot possibly understand why I left her there."

Sam's hands clapped together, startling both boys, though not half as bad as the glint in her eye did a second later. "That gives me an idea. Danny, what exactly does that extractor thing do?"

"Uh, if I remember right, it's supposed to suck ectoplasmic entities out of people."

A beat. Tucker looked repulsed. Sam licked her lips. "Does it _work_?"

"Thankfully, no."

"But some of your parents' inventions do!" She clapped her hands together again. "Tucker, get that list you've been making."

Tucker obeyed, though with some hesitation, and slowly pulled the PDA from his pocket. "Okay…"

Smirking, Danny leaned back on his hands. He knew where this was going.

* * *

Casper High was unnaturally dark.

Danny had passed by the school at night before and he knew there were always lights left on in the hallways, but as far as he could tell, there currently wasn't a single light on in the entire building. As if he needed another reason to suspect the Lunch Lady was still in residence.

She'd made it pretty clear before that she considered the Casper High campus her domain now. She didn't seem to mind the presence of humans, fortunately for the students, faculty, and staff who'd been present earlier that day, but how long would that last? Even if the half-ghosts kept their distance, the Lunch Lady was dead and the job vacancy she'd left behind had long since been filled. There was no place for her here and as soon as she realized that, she would undoubtedly get violent. Then the casualties would begin.

They met beneath the football bleachers, hidden from view in case anyone happened to drive by. As per the plan, Danny had snuck out of the house with as much functional Fenton tech as he could carry, which admittedly wasn't much, and they looked even less impressive once he spread them out on the ground for inspection. There was a gun that fired and reeled in a ghost-proof net, an ectogun the size of a shotgun, the (still nonfunctional) Fenton Thermos, and the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick (which was, as far as he could tell, just a bat with the word Fenton on it).

"Was this really everything?" Sam asked with enough disappointment to sink a freighter. "I thought your parents have been making anti-ghost weapons for years!"

"Well, yeah," said Danny, "but they keep most of it locked up in the weapons vault."

"You have a weapons vault?" Sam and Tucker replied in unison.

"Yeah and pretty much everything in there was made before the portal was up and running. None of it's ever been tested. I figured this stuff has a better chance of actually doing what it's supposed to, since it was made after."

Sam pursed her lips, picked up the Anti-Creep stick, and gave him a pointed look. "Danny, this is a regular bat."

"Well, if you don't want it…."

"I didn't say that." She twirled the bat a few times then brought it to rest against her shoulder.

Danny couldn't quite hold off a smirk. Picking up the ectogun and the thermos, he handed them to Tucker. "Take these. Stay out of sight as much as you can and when you get a clear shot, take it."

Tucker nodded seriously. He hooked the gun under his arm and held up the thermos. "Didn't your dad say this thing doesn't work yet?"

"I was hoping maybe you could figure it out."

" _Me?!_ "

"Well, sure. You're the techno geek here, remember?" Danny grinned. "Besides, a fresh pair of eyes might be just what it needs."

Tucker's brow furrowed and he frowned at the thermos but Danny could see the wheels already turning behind his eyes.

"And," Danny went on, picking up the Grappler, "if all else fails, we can catch her in this and haul her back to the portal by force!"

"But Danny, you don't have a weapon," Sam pointed out.

"Don't need one."

"Bull."

"Hey, my mom's a black belt. She's taught me a few things."

* * *

The darkness which had permeated the entire school from the outside vanished the instant they entered the building and they became eerily aware of how far the Lunch Lady's influence had stretched in just the few short hours she'd been left unattended. Everything seemed the tiniest bit off, in the same unsettling way as furniture in a familiar room being shifted one inch to the left. The walls a little too tall, the edges of the lockers a little too sharp, the doors spaced a little too far apart. The ever present posters and banners on the walls were distorted, askew. A faint glow seemed to radiate from walls themselves, and the sound of the air moving through the vents could very well be mistaken for a faint moan or wail.

It was, in short, creepy as all hell, and their ghost senses went off the moment they phased inside.

Tucker's first few footsteps seemed to reverberate forever. Without a word, Danny wrapped his arms around Tucker's chest, and hefted him into the air. Tucker grumbled about the position being undignified but he was quickly hushed by Sam. He allowed himself to be carried down the hall without further complaint.

The halls began to fill with blueish light the closer they drew to the cafeteria. When they rounded the corner and the cafeteria doors came into view, so, too, did the source of the light, almost obscenely bright, filtering through the windows on the door.

"Well," Danny muttered, "looks like we were right. You guys ready?"

Tucker flipped the switch on the ectogun, it powered up with a high-pitched hum, and then he turned invisible. Sam tapped the Anti-Creep stick against her palm and dropped out of visibility as well.

"Remember, should worst come to absolute worst, we call in my parents," Danny whispered then phased through the wall.

The entire cafeteria was glowing. The walls, the floors, all emanating an uncanny blue light. The air around the tables distorted as if they were radiating extreme heat but when Danny approached, he felt nothing. He set Tucker down by the table then floated higher into the air for a better look at their surroundings. The Lunch Lady herself was not present and despite the weird distortions, nothing seemed to have been animated like the ovens earlier.

The clang of metal hitting metal startled Danny so badly he had to slam his hands over his mouth so he wouldn't scream. He whipped around towards the kitchen but he could see nothing through the metal shutters covering the serving window. After a few moments, there came another noise, quieter than the one before. A rattling. Then a drawer closed. Danny lowered his hands, exhaled quietly, and started towards the kitchen. He was aware of Sam floating alongside him about five feet to his left, still completely invisible to his eyes.

He silently phased through the shuttered window and looked around. The stoves were on and going, but not alive (for the moment), and he saw pots of something cooking away on their burners. The Lunch Lady herself was floating at the counter where Danny often glimpsed lunch ladies dishing out fruit into little cups to be served. She was cooking. Just cooking. She had ingredients piled around her that she pulled from and put into the pot she was currently working on. Goulash, probably. Tomorrow would've been goulash day if the menu was as it should be. And she was humming to herself, a lively little tune that completely belied her eerie surroundings.

Danny…paused.

He had never really bought into all the facts his parents claimed to know about ghosts. According to his parents, ghosts were imprinted with instincts and memories from the life of the human they came from. Of course, they said a lot of other things on that topic, some of which Danny never bought into, but maybe, just maybe, they were right about this. How many days and hours had that lady spent in that very position, making that same goulash recipe from memory, humming to herself to pass the time.

It was kind of sad, really.

 _Giant meat monster_ , Danny reminded himself. _Major damage potential. Will literally kill Sam if given the chance._

Still, it didn't seem right to just fire on her from behind.

Danny could feel Sam hovering just beside him and he threw her what he hoped to be a tempering look. He emerged from the wall and landed silently on the floor near the door. The Lunch Lady _still_ hadn't noticed him.

So, Danny cleared his throat quietly and asked, "Are you making lunch for tomorrow?"

A slight stutter in her rhythm was the only indication the Lunch Lady had heard him but she recovered almost instantaneously and kept working. She did not acknowledge him.

"Goulash, right? Goulash day always comes after meatloaf day." Danny went on, watching her carefully for any sign that she was about to attack. "But it never tastes very good."

The Lunch Lady paused.

"I think it's the cook's fault. A lot of the stuff she makes isn't good. Could I try some of yours?"

And, finally, the ghost turned around and stared at him. She was probably sizing him up, weighing her options, and wondering where the others were. He tried to make himself look as nonthreatening as possible and wished he had pockets to shove his hands into.

"You aren't welcome here, child," she sing-songed after a moment.

Danny shrugged. "I've been a social pariah since the first day of kindergarten. Not being welcome is my default state. Can I try the goulash?"

The Lunch Lady considered him with a tilted head and narrowed eyes. "Where are your friends?"

"Around," he replied with a vague gesture of his hand. A thought flitted through his mind and he grabbed at it. "All that running earlier really took a lot out of us. I'm the strongest. So is that a no on the goulash?"

She said nothing.

"Oh well," he sighed, "I guess I'll never know how good it could be."

"Very well, dear."

He could practically feel Sam's eyes on the back of his head as he followed the Lunch Lady over to the stoves. She grabbed a plastic bowl and a ladle and scooped some out for him. Conjuring a spoon up from…somewhere, she held out both for him and Danny accepted them with a genuine smile. He peered down at the contents and stirred them around with the spoon.

"There's a lot in this," he noted, glancing up. "It isn't just noodles and hamburger."

"It's my recipe," she told him with a hint of pride. "I've always made it exactly this way. Go on, try it."

Danny shrugged once and lifted the spoon to his mouth. He chewed slowly to savor it and… "It's good," he realized aloud.

"No talking with your mouth full."

He finished chewing as contritely as possible, swallowed, then said, " _Really_ good."

The Lunch Lady preened.

"Y'know, you could try and get a job here," he suggested. "I could put in a good word for you."

"Oh, that's very kind of you, sweetie, but I've already got it taken care of."

Not good. "You, uh, you do?"

"Yes, sweetie! Tomorrow morning, when the _other_ lunch lady gets here, I intend to take over her body."

"Wait, what?"

The Lunch Lady looked at him like he'd sprouted a second head. "Like that body you're riding around in."

Danny frowned. "Huh?"

She pointed at him. "Just as you have taken that human's child body, I intend to take the body of the woman in charge around here as my own."

Danny looked down at himself, confused. What was she—oh. _Ooooh._ His parents _had_ been right! Ghosts could take over living bodies. What had they called it? Possession? He didn't blame her for making that assumption. Hell, he probably would have too in her case.

He shook his head at her. "This is my body."

"And come tomorrow, I'll have my own body, too," Lunch Lady replied simply. Something about her tone caused the hairs on the back of Danny's neck to stand up. Or maybe it was the way the air around him suddenly seemed hotter and thicker, pressing in on him unpleasantly.

Damn. Well, there'd be time later to mourn the delicious lunches that could never be. "B-but what about her? Her life? That's not fair to her!"

"You say with stolen lips."

He pressed his lips together. She wasn't going to believe him even if he told her. "But you'll hurt her," he protested.

"The old bat only has a few years left in her. She'll hardly miss 'em."

She intended to be in it for the long haul, then. She was gonna ride around in that woman's body until she died and then move on to another one until it expired, too. And on and on and—no. No. Not on his watch.

Danny drew himself up to full height and tightened his grip on the bowl. "I can't let you hurt her," he warned.

Though her expression remained pleasant, the edges of her hair had begun to dance with flames and a strange gleam entered her eye. "Now, sweetie, you know students aren't allowed in the kitchen. So, why don't you take your goulash and go eat outside."

Danny took a deep breath, sent a silent prayer to anyone that might be listening, then threw the bowl of goulash into her face.

That did it.

* * *

Tucker was crouched out in the cafeteria near the door to the kitchen, wondering what the hell Danny was playing at in there, when there was suddenly a loud crash and his best friend came careening through the wall, hollering at the top of his lungs, and disappeared through the opposite wall.

Tucker leaped through the wall and into action, just in time to see Sam swing the Anti-Creep Stick right into the Lunch Lady's head. A human would've probably died on impact. The Lunch Lady was only sent careening into the nearest countertop. Undeterred, Sam was already bringing the bat back around for another swing.

He hefted the ecto-gun up to his shoulder and took aim.

Sam hit her again, this time in the shoulder, and the Lunch Lady let out an earthshaking bellow of rage. Stew exploded from the pots on the stoves, the ovens burst into flames, cutlery rose into a swirling dangerous torrent.

" _ **You conniving little BRAT**_!"

The Lunch Lady began to swell in size. Sam, wisely, backed off, but twirled the bat in her hand in anticipation. And Tucker, knowing an opening when he saw one, pulled the trigger.

The ectogun kicked like a fucking _mule_ but the result was a softball-sized glob of green energy blasting the Lunch Lady right in the gut. She screeched and her eyes zeroed in on him, and so did the whirl of cutlery. Tucker dropped his invisibility, figuring there was no point now, and instead focused his efforts on remaining intangible.

Danny came tearing back into the room behind Tucker just as the cutlery came hurtling in their direction and barely managed to avoid getting skewered.

"Change of plan," Danny huffed. "Give me the ecto-gun, you focus on the thermos."

"Got it." He tossed Danny the weapon and then backed through the wall into the cafeteria. Danny shouted something at the Lunch Lady and the ectogun went off, followed by another roar. Tucker unhooked the thermos from his belt and held it up.

He'd had a few thoughts earlier but, really, there wasn't much to go on here. He had no idea how it worked, what it was made from, or what it was supposed to do beyond 'trap ghosts'. Maybe if he had an hour to take it apart—

No. No. Danny and Sam were counting on him. He could figure this out.

Tucker had known Danny, and by extension his parents, since they were in preschool. The elder Fentons may have been kind of nuts but they were brilliant inventors when they put their minds to it. The fact that they lived primarily off of patents they had made when they were younger could attest to that. This 'Fenton Thermos' was functionally sound, he had to believe that, it was just missing something. Something they hadn't accounted for, didn't have access to. But what?

* * *

Danny wondered if giving Sam the Anti-Creep Stick had been wise. She was having way too much fun with that thing. For the first minute or so, the Lunch Lady didn't seem to know what to do against a teenager armed with a baseball bat and absolutely thriving. But giving the ghost hell _had_ been the goal, so, objectively, the Anti-Creep Stick had been a good idea. Except now Danny wasn't sure they'd be able to get it _away_ from her when it was over.

But all things considered, he thought the fight was going very well.

Until it wasn't.

More specifically, until the Lunch Lady figured out that the bat was literally all Sam had going for her and started to give chase. She flew close to the smoke detector and the damn thing started screeching and flashing and _then_ the sprinklers had the audacity to kick in and add half a dozen torrents of water into the mix. Sam started swearing up a storm and the Lunch Lady yelled at her for her language and Danny took the opportunity to fire the ecto-gun at her again.

It was, in short, utter pandemonium. Not to mention the sudden added pressure of the imminent arrival of the fire department.

The Lunch Lady snarled at him and went intangible and began sinking into the floor. Danny fired again and the blast hit her right in the chest and knocked her flying. She flung a barrage of knives in his direction and Danny, panicking, held the gun up to shield himself. Some glanced off the sides but he felt three distinct impacts, the force of which shook him. He lowered the gun to assess the damage. Three glowing knives had imbedded themselves in the gun, one in the barrel, one just above the trigger, and the third in the energy core. He pulled the trigger and the gun's only reaction was to become searing hot beneath his hands, letting out a high pitch whine that grew in intensity with every second that passed. Thinking fast, he flung it like a frisbee at the Lunch Lady then retreated to Sam's perch on the industrial-grade vents over the flaming stoves.

The Lunch Lady went intangible long before the gun reached her and didn't even turn to watch as it exploded against the wall.

"This isn't going well," Danny commented.

"Oh, _ya think_?" Sam snapped. "As fun as this is, I can't really do much damage to her with this thing."

The Lunch Lady grinned at them and lifted her arms into the air. The air around them began to swirl, taking the water with it. Food burst forth from the fridges and cabinets, rose up from the floors and counters, mixing with bowls, plates, trays, and pretty much anything else not bolted down.

"I've had just about enough of you little brats!" She shouted. "You need manners, discipline, respect!"

Danny and Sam gaped at her. What now?! If Sam tried to charge her, she'd get hit with a barrage of the dangerous mix swirling around them. There was no way the Fenton Grappler's net was big enough to hold her when she was nine feet tall and the ecto gun was shot. And the fire alarm, which continued its ear-shattering screeching, warned of the fire department's imminent arrival.

Suddenly, the door to the cafeteria burst open and there was Tucker, leg extended like he'd kicked it open, which he probably had. He dropped his leg and, eyes glowing an unnatural blue, held the uncapped thermos out in front of him. "HEY, UGLY!"

The Lunch Lady rounded on him with a furious growl. She spotted the thermos and screeched, "No! Soup's not on today's menu!"

"Man, screw your menu!"

Tucker squeezed his eyes hut and his entire body began to glow blue. The light passed to the thermos and a beam of pure light shot forth from its mouth. It hit the startled Lunch Lady dead on and she let out an unholy screech as it began to draw her in. She writhed and struggled, her body distorting as she struggled against the pull of the thermos, screaming denials, threats, and vows to return, before her words became inaudible over the whirl of the thermos and the blaring alarms.

She disappeared inside the thermos and Tucker slammed the lid on top. The wind in the room abruptly died as the ghost's connection to the physical world was terminated, the light faded from the walls, the flames in the ovens sputtered out, and everything that had been whirling through the air crashed against the nearest surface with a deafening clatter.

Soaked through with water, goulash, and god-knows-what-else, the three teenagers gawked at each other wordlessly through the gloom pierced only by the painfully bright flashes of the fire alarm.

Tucker found his voice first. "Holy crap it worked!"

* * *

The flashing lights outside the cafeteria announced the arrival of the fire trucks and Danny was forced to leave the scattered pieces of the ruined ecto-gun behind.

The teenagers beat a hasty retreat to the rooftops across the street from the school and watched, invisible, as more firetrucks showed up, then police, and Principal Ishiyama herself not long after. Danny lost his transformation not long after the police turned up and Sam's fell away a few minutes later as well. They were too far away to hear anything distinct and there was nothing they could do anyway, so when the news vans began rolling up, they decided it was time to dip.

* * *

The incident at Casper High was, predictably, the top story for the morning news. Danny sat on the couch with his parents and sister, slowly munching on cereal, as the reporter on screen cataloged the damage that had been done.

" _Police have informed us that they are still working to identify the vandals' point of entry into the school, as all doors windows were locked, and, so far, they have found no signs of forced-entry."_

"Jack…" Maddie said slowly. "You don't think…?"

He did think.

Danny forced himself to sit there and chew his cereal while his father took off like a madman towards the lab to get their gear and prayed the remnants of the ecto-gun he'd left behind were untraceable.


	3. Paranormal Activities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If we're gonna do this, we're gonna have to be smart about it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Wintermoth on tumblr and you're absolutely allowed to come yell at me about this story!

The choice to keep their powers a secret from their parents had been made within the first twenty-four hours of the Accident and boiled down to the fact that they'd go ballistic.

Sam wasn't sure what her parents would freak out about more: the fact that she was in a lab accident, the fact she was half-ghost, or the fact that she had some weird psychic connection to two boys. They'd probably resort to moving out of state if that was what it took to get her away from the Fentons. Tucker's parents were a lot more reasonable but even they would probably forbid him from seeing Danny again. As for Danny's parents, well, who even knew? But as time went on, their behavior only solidified the decision in his mind. Their disdain for ghosts ran unnaturally deep for two people who'd never seen one until a few weeks ago and, if they thought Danny was a spirit possessing the body of their son, he wouldn't put it past them to do something regrettable.

The decision to try the whole superhero thing came the day after they'd destroyed the Casper High kitchen. School was canceled while police investigated, and the half-ghosts congregated on top of the Fenton Ops Center to discuss what the _fuck_ they were supposed to do now.

Even if Danny could figure out how to turn the portal off, his parents would just fix it. Rebuild it if they had to. The damn thing had doors but they must've ended up haunted because they opened and closed whenever the heck they felt like it, and it was going to take his parents a while to come up with a stable locking mechanism that could successfully function in proximity to a hole in reality. In the meantime, the proverbial front door was wide open for all sorts of ecto flotsam and jetsam to come through at their leisure.

Given that every ghost they'd seen thus far had picked a fight or caused property damage, they had to assume that any ghost coming through would be looking to do the same. Leaving them for squishy, breakable humans to deal with was out of the question. Not even the Fentons, for all their years of paranormal research and weapon designs, were prepared for the active threat they now faced. Hell, they hadn't even realized the threat was even here yet.

So…that left them, three teenagers that were somehow both ghost and human, to deal with the problem. And one of them couldn't even transform. Fuckin' A.

"If we're gonna do this, we're gonna have to be smart about it," Tucker said seriously, "and we gotta go all in. Plans. Strategies. Protocols. Gotta protect our secret identities, too, so we need code names."

"Which means no more Fenton Anti-Creep stick," Danny agreed with a pointed look at Sam. "Give it back."

"Yeah, guess a bat with your name on it would be a bit conspicuous, huh?" Sam mused with a rueful frown. Then she shrugged. "Sure, I'll bring it by later. But we are going to need weapons. That ecto-gun last night was cool while it worked, but it's way too big for us to haul around. Do your parents have anything small?"

"That _was_ the small one," Danny admitted with a grimace. "Other than that it's just stuff like the Grappler, which isn't actually a weapon, and this." Danny held up the now-functional containment device and turned it back and forth for inspection. "Good job, by the way. How'd you get it to work?"

Tucker smiled with pride. "I basically gave it a jump. Like a car."

Danny blinked owlishly. "Alright then. Think you could do it again?"

"Sure, probably. Why? Are there more?"

"I don't think so. We'll need at least three for all of us." He sighed. "I wonder if I can convince them a ghost stole this one to get them to make more."

"Well, okay, so we have something to catch the ghosts in, but we still have to _fight_ them," Sam pointed out. "And for that, we need weapons. No offense, mister my-mom's-a-black-belt but you did jack last night."

"Hey! I threw a bowl at her face. That counts."

Sam's eyes flicked skywards and she inhaled through her nose. "Goulash is not a weapon."

"You've never eaten the school goulash or you wouldn't say that," Tucker intoned gravely and Danny nodded.

"Oh yeah I'm sure it'll be real funny when the next ghost turns us into goulash!" she snapped.

"You mean _ghoul_ -ash."

"Danny Fenton, _I swear to god I will finish the job_."

He cackled, utterly unabashed. Her eyes flashed yellow, and he had to take a few deep breaths to calm himself. But he didn't apologize.

"So much for being serious about this," she grumbled, folding her arms, and leaned against the support column behind her.

Tucker heaved a sigh. "I hate to say this, but Sam's right. We might be half-ghost but we really don't have anything going for us here. The Lunch Lady was the worst ghost we've faced so far but what if she's, like, average for a ghost and all the other ones were just weaklings? I mean, she's the first one that actually looked and acted human."

"And if she'd been able to meat-up again, there's no way we would've gotten her without some serious damage to the school." Danny agreed. "And us. I don't know. I'd rather fight with my fists. I just need practice. But if you want to keep the bat thing, going, you should go get a metal one so you don't burn it to a crisp with your hair."

Sam touched the ends of her hair thoughtfully. As a ghost, it lingered somewhere between hair and flames, leaning more towards the latter the angrier she got, and her ponytail was constantly on fire. She'd already set a poster on fire by leaning against it, the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick probably wouldn't fare any better. "I'll do some research," she said.

Danny nodded once then turned his gaze to Tucker and Sam mirrored him. Tucker glanced between them, uneasy. "What?"

"You can't get into a fight until you can transform."

"Hey!"

"Look, Tuck, we all agreed our ghost forms are more durable than our human ones. You can't even fly like this! Never mind the fact you'd be recognized."

Tucker's shoulders slumped and he folded his arms. "I am trying, y'know. I tried last night at the school, on the roof, and at home. I don't understand what I'm doing _wrong_! I _want_ to transform!"

Danny and Sam glanced at each other. "It's going to take longer than eighteen hours to figure it out, Tuck. You need to, um… process your fears. I think that's what Jazz would say. But in the meantime, you _have_ to stay back, no matter what happens."

Tucker's frown hardened in determination. "I'll figure it out."

* * *

They used Nasty Burger as an excuse to get close to Casper High around noon. A sizable crowd had gathered behind the police tape cordoning off the whole premises, most of them students and reporters. Over half a dozen vans with various company logos were parked in the parking lot, along with a couple cop cars, a firetruck, and a few sedans which probably belonged to the faculty currently on campus. The Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle was parked just up the road but Danny couldn't see any sign of his parents, which either meant they were being kept far from the scene…or they were already indoors.

Tucker whistled quietly. "It looks like they've called in a small army. Was it really that bad?"

"The sprinklers got set off. There's probably tons of water damage," Sam pointed out. "And that's assuming they only went off in the kitchen and cafeteria."

"Well, I didn't expect to see you three here."

The three teenagers startled at the imposing tone of their teacher's voice. Mr. Lancer wasn't quite glaring daggers at them but it was a near thing. "If I were you, I would've stayed far away for as long as possible."

Sam folded her arms and lifted her chin, radiating defiance the way her ghost radiated heat. "Why? _I_ didn't do anything."

Lancer let out a neutral hum. "You two, however."

Danny shrugged. "We were worried about her. It looked like she'd been hurt during the fight." _And you weren't listening_ went unspoken but all present heard it nonetheless.

"And so you decided to cut school for the rest of the day."

Sam raised her eyebrows but otherwise said nothing. Neither did the boys. Another moment of glaring and Lancer seemed to realize he wasn't going to get anywhere right now. "We'll discuss this later. I expect all three of you in my office first thing tomorrow. Or whenever we reopen."

"Do they know what happened?" Tucker asked with just enough enthusiasm to pass for a teenager excited his school had been wrecked.

Lancer exhaled through his nose and shook his head. "The official story for the moment is that vandals broke into the school and destroyed the kitchen and cafeteria. Which reminds me: Miss Manson, unfortunately, the school board has decided to pull the menu program."

Her glare deepened into a full on scowl and she let out a sound of disgust.

* * *

The next day, after relinquishing the Anti-Creep Stick, Sam dispatched Danny with fifty bucks and a shopping list while she braved the massive sporting goods store that had just opened in the mall. She'd spent the night before researching what kind of bats would suit her needs most so she would go in prepared. She ended up learning way more about major league baseball than she'd ever wanted to but at least she would be able to make her purchase without needing to chat up an employee and remain unmemorable.

After carefully determining which bat would be her new partner in not-crime, she headed to the camping department where she purchased three robust multi-tools with price tags that would probably make the boys wet themselves. She also picked up some cans of mace (no matter what ghosts were made of, eyes were eyes, right?) and securable carabiners. Next she went to the army surplus store and bought three black utility belts and three black accessory pouches for storage. Finally, she went to a pharmacy, and bought the largest first aid kit she could find.

She met up with Danny at their designated spot near the park and he eagerly presented her his bounty. Two bags full of supplies she'd requested and some color swatches for heat resistant spray paints to choose from. She selected a metallic black that, according to the description, would have a slight blue sheen in the sunlight, and sent Danny back to buy it.

Tucker still hadn't returned their calls by the time they were done so they went to Danny's house instead. They hid most of their purchases in the trunk in Danny's room then retreated to the Ops Center roof. They spread out the newspapers and trash bags to protect their work area and then Sam proudly presented her bat for inspection.

Danny took it, testing its weight and balance, even swung it a few times like he knew the first thing about baseball, and finally returned it to her with an approving, "Nice."

They donned their protective masks and goggles and got to work. Danny dutifully ripped pieces of masking tape which she affixed to the grip of the bat. He held the bat upright on its knob while Sam sprayed on primer with an ease which could only come from experience. Not that it really surprised him. She didn't always tell them everything she got up to but this definitely tracked.

The bat had to be held steady for ten minutes while the primer set and dried and while they waited, their conversation quickly turned to the subject of what she'd bought. So she phased through the roof and returned half a minute later with her bags, which she began to unload. His jaw. D dropped.

"Holy crap, Sam, this must have cost a fortune!"

Sam shrugged. She wasn't so spoiled as to say something like 'it was only three hundred dollars' but the fact was, she didn't consider three hundred very much at all when it came to their safety. "I've had a lot of allowance saved up." And it wasn't even a lie, really. She _did_ save a lot of her allowance. Her allowance was just significantly larger than most kids her age.

"And it's worth it," she added.

"You gotta let me pay you back for some of this."

"Nope."

"But Sam! This is…"

"Consider it an investment in our longevity and security. And don't even try to give me any money," she added sharply, pointing her finger directly at his nose. "I'll just put it back in your room when you're not looking. You have to fall asleep at some point."

He nodded, still uncomfortable, but wisely opted not to press the subject. But that didn't stop him from muttering, "You act like I won't feel you coming from a mile away."

Of all their new, strange abilities, the peculiar sixth sense they had for each other was perhaps the easiest to come to terms with. It had taken them a while to notice it, since they had hardly left each other's sides for two days after the accident. It wasn't until Tucker and Sam's parents finally demanded they come home that they realized anything had changed. The moment they left his house, Danny became keenly aware they were gone. For the first minute or so, he thought it was nothing, just an after effect of having spent the better part of sixty hours with them. Except it didn't go away. Danny could feel Sam and Tucker moving further and further away. A frantic three-way call confirmed that they all felt it.

It wasn't telepathy (they'd tried) but more of an awareness of each other. With a little concentration, they could determine which direction each other was in, and they could always tell when the others were close by. It was unlike anything they'd ever felt before and not something they could easily articulate. It was just something they knew. The way one might look at the sky and know if it was day, each of them could look inwards and find the others.

But it also meant they were always well aware of each other when they were close by. They each knew the exact moment when they came within a thousand yards of one another and the closer they were, the easier it was to pinpoint their location. Hide and seek was a total bust.

Sam's answering grin was almost predatory. "Wanna bet?"

* * *

Tucker turned up around one o'clock, apologized for not returning their calls, and presented them with a large pizza and a 2-liter of Coke to make up for it.

"Busy morning?" Danny asked as Tucker set their lunch down on the ground.

Tucker grinned and promptly blipped out of existence. Sam gasped and Danny's head snapped up. That wasn't invisibility. Danny and Sam glanced at each other then scrambled to their feet. Danny spotted a flash of yellow after a moment searching and raced to the edge of the rooftop to get a better look.

And there was Tucker, grinning at him from the rooftop across the street. Tucker waved and then blipped out again, only to reappear half a second later right behind Danny, who whirled around with a laugh.

"You _can_ teleport!"

Tucker beamed and turned to Sam. "Did you see that, Sam?"

"Enough," she replied, "where did you go?"

"Just across the street." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "I spent hours last night working on it. So long as I have a clear destination in mind and it's not too far, I can get there."

"That's actually awesome."

Tucker grinned again.

While they ate pizza, Sam brought out her purchases again for Tucker to inspect. Like Danny, he nearly had a stroke when he tried to calculate how much she'd spent. Sam brushed off his stammered offers to help pay for it and shoved one of the belts into his hands.

"You were the one who said we needed plans and strategies and here's my contribution: tools." She held out one of the multitools for him to take as well and, after a moment's hesitation, Tucker accepted it.

Neither boy said anything apart from thanks as she finished distributing everything between them. When she got to the first-aid kit, she paused. She intended to take this back to her house for her own use but…. With a shrug, she opened it, riffled through until she found gauze packs and disinfectant wipes and gave the boys one of each. With that out of the way, lunch resumed in earnest, and the conversation moved onto a lighter subject.

"Y'know," Danny began around a mouthful of pizza. He swallowed, smacked his lips, then continued, "I've been thinking about the code names thing. And I know it's cheesy but hear me out. We should have ghost-themed names."

Sam took a swig of the Coke they were sharing, smacked her lips, then deadpanned, "Ghost-themed."

"Yeah like uh. Phantom. I was thinking Phantom."

"Just 'Phantom'?" Tucker wrinkled his nose. "That's not very superhero."

"Oh so Flash, Speedy, and Robin are valid superhero names, but Phantom isn't?"

Tucker opened his mouth to argue but then closed it. Sam cocked her head, mulling it over with twisted lips. She took another swig from the two-liter then passed it into Tucker's outstretched hand. "Phantom."

Danny mirrored her position. "Yes?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm just trying to imagine calling you Phantom. I guess it's not _that_ different from Fenton."

He grinned. "That was where I got the idea from."

"Ooh, ooh ooh!" Practically bouncing in his seat, Tucker threw his arms out to stop both of them. "I got it. Call me… _Ghouly._ "

…

Sam wrinkled her nose. "Isn't that a bad sci-fi movie from the 80s?"

Tucker blinked, lowered his arms. "That's _The Ghoulies_."

"You mean _The Goonies_?" Danny asked.

"No!"

"No one is going to take you seriously with a name like that." Sam warned him in disdain. "And that includes me."

"But isn't that a good thing? If no one takes me seriously, they'll never see it coming when I kick their butts!"

She considered that, inclined her head in agreement, and then shrugged. "I guess it _is_ your name. But I'm just saying, it's not very intimidating."

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Alright then, what about you?"

Sam puckered her lips and leaned back on her hands. She deliberated for a moment then replied succinctly, "Lilith."

Danny shook his head almost immediately. "Uh uh. No way."

"Hey!"

"Sam, you cannot go flying around named after the literal mother of demons."

Sam started to grin. "You remember!"

"I pay attention when you tell us things… Most of the time."

"C'mon, it'd be cool."

"Sam, I cannot even begin to describe to you the frenzy my parents will descend into when they find out where that name comes from."

Her grin turned wicked and she folded her arms, leaning towards him. "Sounds like my kind of party."

"Aren't you Jewish?!" Tucker protested. "Isn't naming yourself after a demon, like, against the rules or something?"

"Even more reason to do it, honestly."

Danny buried his face in his hands with a groan. His parents going nuts would only be the beginning. There would be conspiracy theories. Exorcisms. Cults.

"Buuuut," Sam drawled, "I guess it's more demonic than ghostly."

Danny glared at her. She smirked back.

"You weren't really going to go by Lilith were you?"

"Nah."

"Sam!"

* * *

Among the mess left behind by the vandals was a peculiar green substance which the police could not identify in the time between its discovery and dissolution nearly a full day later. And, so, nearly thirty-six hours after the first responders initially arrived on scene, the police decided to humor the 'paranormal investigators' loitering beyond the police line. The Fentons were allowed into the kitchen while the officer in charge of the scene, two detectives, and a CSI looked on in amusement.

The ectoplasm itself may have long since dissolved but the Fentons weren't forerunners in their field for nothing. After less than a minute on the scene, Maddie Fenton, holding some manner of scanner in one hand, pointed to a discolored patch on the wall and asked if they'd found a glowing green substance which had dissolved after twenty-two hours.

Their smiles faded.

And Maddie, who had known from the first that she was merely being humored, had to use every ounce of self-restraint within her body to not smirk at the members of law enforcement. Finally, she had their attention. The CSI took careful notes while she described ectoplasm and its behavior and how to preserve any future samples they might acquire. The detectives, on the other hand, were less than thrilled when she told them that their perps had probably quite literally walked through the walls.

* * *

"Ectoplasm!" Maddie squealed in the middle of their kitchen. "Can you believe it?! The destruction in the school was caused by ghosts!"

"Uh, Mom? You maybe want to sound a _little_ less excited about that?" Jazz asked, glaring over the edge of her book.

(No. No she did not.)

* * *

A scream shattered the peaceful night air like a fist through a drum and woke half the block.

" _ **GHOST!**_ "

Even though he'd planned for his dad to spot him, Danny still let slip an undignified yelp. He whirled around, clutching the thermos to his chest, and stared down at the man glaring at him through the open window. He grinned, gave Jack a friendly little wave, then disappeared before he could go for an ectogun. He waited a few minutes then slipped back into the house, transformed back into Fenton, and dropped into bed with a satisfied grin.

The following morning, Jack was combing through the entire lab for the Fenton Thermos, which, of course, was nowhere to be found. Eventually, Maddie went down to help him look.

Danny…waited.

And waited.

Finally, twenty minutes after his mother joined in, he casually made his way down to the basement and peered around at the mess of inventions, boxes, and whatnot scattered across every available surface and parts of the floor. The weapons vault was wide open and he heard his father moving around within. His mother was perched in the computer chair, arms folded, scowling.

"Did you guys find it?" he asked, playing the role of the doubtful but dutiful son to a T.

Maddie exhaled through her nose and shook her head.

Danny's jaw dropped. "You don't think…?"

"I _think,"_ she said slowly, a dangerous edge to her voice, "it's time we got to work making that ghost shield.

* * *

School resumed the following Monday with an assembly in the auditorium that all students and staff were required to attend. Principal Ishiyama explained what had happened the previous week, as if there was anyone left who didn't know, and gave them exactly nothing new. Which was exactly what the police had.

Neither Danny, Sam, nor Tucker were fooled. They knew the police suspected student involvement but had nothing to pin anyone with, which was what this assembly was really about. And, sure enough, when the police chief took the stage, he dangled a metaphorical carrot over everyone's heads with the promise of a cash reward for any substantial tips which helped lead to an arrest. As expected, the student body quietly salivated at the prospect.

Tucker let out a whine so quiet that the human sitting to his right couldn't hear it, but the half-ghosts to his left absolutely could. Oh, this would torment him for a while.

Lancer caught them as they were filing out with the rest of the student body and asked them to come to his office during lunch. Nothing they hadn't expected, really, but at least Lancer didn't look particularly upset.

Morning classes felt odd. Everyone was a bit out of it after an unexpected week off, and the teachers outright admitted they were going to be compressing lessons so they wouldn't fall behind schedule too badly. Danny, for his part, kept his head down and, short of turning invisible outright, tried to do nothing which would draw the attention of any of his regular bullies. He so did not want to give Lancer a reason to be mad at him later.

He and Sam shared third period world history, and Danny was uncomfortable the moment he set foot inside the classroom. It was like butterflies in his stomach and the strangest feeling of something intermittently squeezing his body. No one else seemed to be acting unusually. Sam would shift oddly in her seat every so often, as if uncomfortable, but it was hard to tell if she was feeling what he was or if she was struggling with floating again.

Their teacher was focused on the board.

Danny quickly scribbled a note and slipped it onto her desk. Sam opened it surreptitiously and her lips twisted as she read it. Without a word, she folded the piece of paper back up and tucked it between the pages of her notebook. She glanced at Danny and gave him a discreet nod.

So she _did_ feel it.

The lesson forgotten, Danny tried to figure out what exactly was wrong with their classroom. It couldn't be a ghost, their senses would've gone off. Was it a lingering effect of the haunting? He tried to picture the layout of Casper High in his mind, where they were currently, and _ooooh_. The kitchen was literally thirty feet away. Sure there were a few walls and a bathroom between it and them but this was as close as they'd been to it since last Monday. That _couldn't_ be a coincidence.

Danny and Sam were the first ones out of the room when the bell rang and they practically tripped over themselves trying to get as far as they could as fast as they could. By the time they had put an entire hall's length between the kitchen and themselves, the unease finally faded. This was where Tucker found them three minutes later, on his way towards Lancer's office.

He took one look at their faces and asked, "You guys okay?"

Sam told him to go take a walk down the hall. He was confused but did as instructed and they both watched him like hawks while he sauntered along the hall. About halfway down, his steps faltered. Another twenty feet and he stopped dead in his tracks. He stood there, completely still, while throngs of students brushed past him in annoyance on the way to the cafeteria. Then without warning, Tucker spun on his heel and practically scurried back up the hall to them.

" _What_ in the _actual_ hell is _that_ about?" he demanded.

"Oh, good," said Danny, "so we're not crazy."

"I would be if I had to sit through a whole period of that." Tucker folded arms. "What the hell?"

"Those bathrooms down there? The kitchen is on the other side."

Tucker's eyes widened. He turned to give the hall another appraising look and then shuddered. "No thank you. What gives? Did your parents do something?"

Danny shook his head. "Not that I know of and, trust me, if they'd been allowed to ghost-proof the space or something, they would've told me and Jazz."

"Twenty bucks says the Lunch Lady did it," Sam said with a scowl.

"How do you figure?"

"She was alone in there for _hours_ and you remember what this place looked like when we got here. The whole school had changed, and the way the cafeteria glowed. I'd have been more surprised if there _wasn't_ some trace left."

"But then, why didn't your parents detect anything?" Tucker asked Danny. "They have all that fancy equipment."

"I think they might have," Danny replied thoughtfully. "They said they'd found leftover ectoplasmic residue but I thought it was just because of the exploded ectogun. Maybe it was more than that."

"And maybe we're more sensitive than their equipment," Sam said simply.

Tucker nodded. "Cool, cool. Now, how do we get _rid_ of it?"

"I suppose I can ask my parents," Danny offered for lack of anything better.

"You do that," Sam said. "I'll do a bit of research. See if I can't find anything about purifying a haunted building or something."

"Pfft. How are _you_ going to find something like that?" Tucker asked.

Sam arched one dark brow and crooked a single finger at her face. "Goth."

Tucker looked between her and Danny in confusion. But apart from a sage nod on Danny's part, he got no clarification, so he sighed. "Whatever. We goin' to Lancer's or what?"

Or what might have been the preferable option.

"Miss Manson, Mr. Fenton, Mr. Foley, come on in," Lancer greeted and stood aside for them to enter his office. He wasn't alone. A cop leaned against the wall, way too casually for a man in full uniform. Danny nearly had a heart attack. Tucker did an immediate 180 but Sam snagged his arm before he could leave, and dragged him inside.

"This is Officer Graham," Lancer introduced and the other man waved.

"Hey there, kids."

Sam was having none of it. "I thought we were here to talk about the whole food fight thing."

Lancer nodded. "Indeed we are. Have a seat please." He gestured to three chairs waiting in front of his desk just for them.

Danny went to take his seat but Sam, and therefore Tucker, did not budge. She stared at the officer pointedly.

Lancer and Officer Graham exchanged a look. "Would you mind waiting outside while my students and I discuss things?"

The cop nodded and quietly excused himself from the room, closing the door behind him. Finally, Sam relaxed, and released Tucker's arm. They took their seats without a word.

"I apologize," Lancer said as he sat down. "I realize how that must have looked. I assure you, his presence here has nothing to do with the three of you. He is simply here in the event any students choose to come forward with information about the incident."

Sam folded her arms. "Sorry. My parents taught me not to say a word when the police get involved without our lawyer present."

Lancer inclined his head but did not seem surprised. Unlike her friends, who glanced at her and each other with quiet incredulity. "I see. Well, then, let's get down to business. We have multiple eye-witnesses who claim you, Mr. Fenton, were the one to instigate the food fight last Monday. From beyond the football team," he added pointedly.

Danny sighed. There was no point in denying it. "Yeah."

"You admit it?"

"Yeah, it was me." Danny sat up straighter. "But Sam and Tucker had nothing to do with it."

"Actually," Sam cut in tersely, "I did, sort of. Dash was ticked off about my lunch menu and picked a fight with Danny over it because we're friends."

Lancer raised his eyebrows. "Is that so?"

"Yeah. Surprised none of your eye-witnesses mentioned that."

"Actually, some did." His mouth twisted in displeasure. "However, that does not excuse your actions, Mr. Fenton. Nor does it excuse sneaking out of my office or skipping school. Speaking of which, how _did_ you get out?"

Danny shrugged. "You've seen Dash play. He's a lousy guard."

Lancer fought a smile and almost won. "I see."

"And we were justified. We told you, we were worried about Sam."

"Ah, yes, that reminds me. Miss Manson. _Were_ you hurt during the fight?"

She shook her head. "Got hit in the head with a milk carton but that was about it. But we did get separated and, considering why Dash came after Danny to begin with, you can't blame them for being worried about me on my own."

Mr. Lancer inclined his head in acknowledgment. "Be that as it may, you should not have left my office."

"You wouldn't let us get a word in edgewise!" Danny snapped, his temper flaring. "Maybe if you'd actually let us tell you what was going on, we wouldn't have had to!"

"Careful, Mr. Fenton."

Danny folded his arms and looked away.

"And as for you, Mr. Foley." Lancer gave him a look of pure weariness. "Just… why?"

Tucker licked his lips. Opened his mouth. Closed it. "I lost a bet."

Lancer let out a long sigh. "And I don't suppose you'll tell me who put you up to it?"

"Nope."

The boys got after school detention.


	4. Homecoming Spooktacular

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny was abruptly cast in shadow. Behind him, a low growl rippled through the air, and he shuddered. He flipped over onto his back and…. Oh. That was a dragon. A ghost dragon but, uh, yep. Definitely a dragon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is finally gaining more traction so yaaayyy hey y'all. welcome.

The ghosts started coming more regularly. It was as if the Lunch Lady had gone back and told everyone about the new stable portal she'd found. Which, in actuality, might have been exactly what happened. Or perhaps word got around in their world, and ghosts long trapped were flocking to Amity Park to take advantage of a way out. Danny wouldn't mind if they just wanted to pass through, except none of them did.

But there must have been some other way out of the Ghost Zone, how else could ghosts have been here for humans to learn about them to begin with? And Danny wasn't always the first one to be alerted to their presence. More than once, he got a frantic call from Tucker or Sam at an odd hour for him to bring the Fenton Thermos for a ghost his sense hadn't detected. Meaning it _hadn't_ come from his house.

Jack finished another Thermos. Danny waited a full day before making off with it, this time leaving behind a note in handwriting as different as he could manage from his own.

_We got them working! Thanks!_

Sam had thought it a poor idea but Danny didn't see the harm. At least his parents wouldn't get the wrong idea…and, oh, how they'd freaked. Apparently ghosts being able to write in English wasn't something they'd expected. Oh well.

Sam got to keep the second thermos.

As for Tucker…. Two weeks after they'd defeated the Lunch Lady, he still couldn't get his ghost form to respond. It was a bit of a morale killer for all of them. Even Danny was beginning to wonder if Tucker would never be able to transform again. The rest of his powers were functioning, he was even managing short bursts of flight, but his ghost half was conspicuously absent. Perhaps if there had been someone they could talk to about it, they might have figured it out, but… well. To his credit, at least, Tucker never stopped trying.

And suddenly it was Homecoming.

Danny had been looking forward to his first high school dance… Before. Like many things about high school that he'd anticipated Before, the dance didn't really rate on his priorities list anymore. That didn't mean he wouldn't like to go… but his popularity status had not budged an inch from middle school, and there wasn't a single girl in school who would give him the time of day if he asked, and he damn well knew it.

He briefly considered asking Paulina to the dance (along with every other straight guy at Casper High), but Dash staked his claim early on there and Danny wasn't suicidal.

But then he wondered if, maybe, he should just ask Sam? She wouldn't mind just going as friends, right? While he was working up the courage to ask her at lunch, Sam made it a point to declare how much she _didn't_ want to go, and Danny, relieved that he'd been too much of a coward to ask sooner, did not broach the subject again. It was fine. There would be other dances. And this way, he could focus on Tucker! Transformation or no, he wouldn't remain shuffled to the sidelines for much longer, and Danny wanted to be sure he had enough practice in human form to not be a safety risk.

But it seemed fate had other plans.

Two days before the dance, Danny went down to the lab to use the computer, only to find his dad parked in a chair a few feet from the portal, wearing his soda hat and fishing vest, with a new fishing rod and line he'd designed specifically for ensnaring ghosts. Ghost fishing. Literal ghost fishing.

"Quiet now," Jack drawled, drawing his arm back. "Don't wanna…spook em." And then he cast his line back through the portal.

Danny could only stare in disbelief. He already had enough on his plate and now his dad was actually trying to _lure_ ghosts to their world? What was he even using as bait?!

Jack sat up suddenly. "Whoa! That soda goes through you like Sherman through Georgia! Here, hang on to this!" He shoved the pole into Danny's unwilling hands and took off before he could utter a word of complaint. "I'll be right back after I visit the Fenton Urinal!"

Oh, so, their toilet had a name now. Nice.

Danny sighed, folded himself into the vacant chair to wait, and wondered if he could convince his dad to leave him be while he used the computer or if he should just cut his losses and go.

The pole jerked in his hands, and he tightened his grip reflexively. Something tugged on the line.

"Oh no."

Now, if he were a smart budding superhero who kept his cool, Danny would've simply let the line go, slammed the button to close the portal, and done everything in his power to convince his father to _never do that again_. But then his ghost sense went off and the tingling cold it left in his throat sent him into a panic. He held fast to the line and prayed, prayed, it was some poor dumb fish ghost.

The line snapped.

Well, crap.

The surface of the portal rippled and suddenly five massive green claws were digging into the floor of the lab, attached to an even bigger blue arm which disappeared inside the portal. Then came another hand immediately after. Danny let out an undignified yelp and abandoned the rod, his dignity, and all pretense of heroism in his frantic scrambling to get away from the portal. The chair clattered to the floor, and, were it not for his quick reflexes, he would've ended up on the floor, too.

Danny was abruptly cast in shadow. Behind him, a low growl rippled through the air, and he shuddered. He flipped over onto his back and…. Oh. That was a dragon. A ghost dragon but, uh, yep. Definitely a dragon.

It dropped the fishing line and bared two rows of glistening white teeth at him in the draconic approximation of a smile. And it was not-friendly one.

Danny _whimpered_.

"I want to _go_!" Its voice was terrifying, deep and rumbling and it echoed in the otherworldly way that all ghost's did. It began crawling its way out of the portal, its claws digging into the floor with every step and yet leaving not a trace behind.

Danny scrambled to his feet and bolted, only to find himself snatched up by a large, clawed hand before he could make it more than a few feet. The air was squeezed from his lungs and he gasped, or tried to, but there was no room for his chest to expand in the dragon's iron grip. His hands scrabbled frantically at unyielding scales as thick as his fingers. _Free—have to get free!_

"I _have_ to go!" the dragon insisted like he had the power to—

_Oh, duh._

"Nope, sorry!" Danny shouted over his shoulder.. "Bathroom's occupied!" And transformed.

The dragon's grip slackened the tiniest bit and Danny _moved_. He wasn't entirely sure what he did but he was free of her grip and that was good enough for him. He rounded on it and caught a glimpse of genuine surprise on its face before it bared its teeth at him. So, like any reasonable human being, he bared his teeth in return.

Below them, Danny's phone began to ring in his backpack. Who the heck was calling him _now_ — Pain exploded in his side and Danny went flying. He slammed into the wall with so much force that it would've probably cracked were it made from less-sturdy materials. He hit the floor like a sack of bricks and laid there, dazed. That…was new.

The dragon's shadow loomed over him and _growled_.

"BACK OFF!"

That was Sam! Wow, he must've really not been paying attention if he'd somehow failed to notice she was close by. Danny raised his head and blinked twice to clear his vision. Sam, in her ghost form, floated between him and the dragon with her bat raised threateningly. Well, at least she had a weapon.

The next few moments passed too quickly for Danny's brain to fully process it. The dragon lunged at her but Sam was quicker. She brought her bat down on the dragon's exposed neck and hit the back of the amulet it was wearing instead. The clasp must have given way under the force because the next thing Danny knew, something golden and glowing was falling to the floor and the dragon slumped to the floor like someone had cut its strings. It fixed its miserable gaze on Danny as it began to rapidly shrink in size and frame.

What was left in its place was a young woman with blonde hair, green skin, and doleful red eyes. Medieval, from the look of her dress. "All I wanted," she whimpered, "was to go to the _ball_." And she buried her face in his hands.

Danny pushed himself up onto his elbows. "Yeah, me too."

Sam whipped her head towards him with a look of surprise. "You do?"

Danny nodded and the world spun a little. He decided to stay down for a minute.

The ghost peered over her hands and blinked. After a moment, she seemed to come back to herself, and her doleful eyes cleared. She gulped. "Oh, saints preserve. Not again."

Sam sank towards the floor, stopping just a few inches shy of the tiles, and her tail coalesced into legs. "Uh. Hi?"

"I, erm." The ghosts eyes darted nervously around before settling on her amulet a few feet away. She rose to her feet, brushing her hands over the corset and skirts of her blue gown, smoothing out wrinkles which really weren't there, and gave them a curtsy. "Forgive mine intrusion into your home, my lord and lady. I would fain beg your forgiveness and the return of mine amulet."

There was something he was missing, Danny was sure of it, but his brain felt slower than usual. So he shrugged and said, "Yeah sure."

The ghost woman peered at him with undisguised curiosity. "I thank you, sir."

She took a step towards her amulet and abruptly found herself blocked by a shiny black bat. She blinked at it then followed its length to Sam, who glared.

"Not so fast there, lady. Who are you, what was all that, and why should we give it back?"

The woman balked but composed herself with practiced efficiency. "Forgive my rudeness." She dipped into a formal curtsy and declared, "I am Princess Dorothea, sister of His Highness, Prince Aragon, ruler of the Kingdom of Mists."

Danny whistled quietly. Sam wasn't impressed. "And the whole dragon thing?"

Princess Dorothea averted her gaze. "An unfortunate accident. Seldom do I lose control of my emotions in such a way but we all have our moments of weakness. Once more, I beg your forgiveness, madam, for I was not of my own mind. I mean neither of you any harm nor bear you any ill will…but the amulet is my most treasured possession."

"Uhuh." Sam gave her a long, considering look, then slowly lowered her bat. "Alright, you can take it, but you need to leave. Right now."

"Yes, of course." She shuffled past Sam and scooped her amulet from the floor.

Danny floated into the air and re-oriented himself to land on his feet. The movement startled the ghost princess and she hovered uncertainly in place for a moment. Realizing Danny was only going to lean against the wall, she hurried forward to scoop up her amulet and fastened it around her neck once more. The glow surrounding her swelled for a few seconds then faded to normal.

The princess curtsied again to Danny then to Sam. "Might I know your names?"

"Danny Phantom," he greeted with a mock salute. "Nice to meet you, uh, your highness."

Sam threw a concerned look his way before fixing her gaze on the ghost princess once more. "I'm Wraith."

"I thank you, Sir Phantom, Lady Wraith. I leave in peace."

With that, she turned her back on them, and flew over to the portal. She paused just before entering and glanced over her shoulder at them. There was something unreadable in her expression but she disappeared through the portal before either of them could think to stop her.

Sam was at Danny's side immediately with a worried cry of his name. "Are you okay?" She asked, already feeling around his head. He winced when her hands found a tender spot.

Was he okay? All his limbs were intact. "I think so? My…head feels real weird. How did you know—"

"How's it going down there, Dann-o?"

Both teenagers tensed at Jack's voice and the sound of the door opening at the top of the stairs. With a quiet curse, Sam gathered Danny in her arms, turned them both invisible and intangible, and flew them through the ceiling of the lab. They phased through his room and returned to tangibility. Sam set him down on his bed, her bat on the floor, and urged him to lie down. He obeyed without protest and let go of his transformation and _whoooooooaaahh._

His head began spinning almost immediately and he slumped against the pillow, closing his eyes. The flash of Sam's transformation startled them back open and he stared. Her hair was completely down, held back from her face by a dark green headband, and she had on actual _makeup_.

"You look pretty," Danny blurted out. Sam's cheeks turned pink and she scowled at him.

"Oh yeah, you definitely have a concussion."

"What, cos I think you're pretty? I always think you're pretty. Bet you'd be the prettiest girl at the dance if we went."

Sam looked at him like he'd suddenly grown a second head. "Stay here. I'll go let Tucker in and get your backpack. Who else is home?"

"Just Dad."

"Cool. I mean it, stay right there."

"Yes ma'am."

Wait. Tucker? Danny focused on the part of his mind where there was always a sense of _Tucker_ and, sure enough, he was practically outside his house. Huh. Maybe he _was_ concussed if he'd missed that.

Sam came back a few minutes later with his backpack, an ice pack, and Tucker.

"A dragon?!" Tucker blurted out.

"Yep," Danny replied, popping the 'p', and held his hands up in the air. "Big one. Blue. Actually a princess, though. She was nice."

"Wow. You did hit your head."

"I hit my whole body. Got knocked into a wall."

Sam dropped his backpack and sat down on his bed. "Alright, ghost boy, lift up." He floated into the air obediently and she rolled her eyes. "Good enough." She felt around for the bump on his head then eased the icepack beneath it and he lowered himself back to the bed. Tucker took off his own backpack and sat down on the other side of the bed.

Danny glanced between them and cleared his throat. "So, um, not that I'm not grateful, but how did the two of you get here so quickly? I thought you went home."

"Dude," said Tucker, "we did. I was on my computer. But then I…I felt…it was like…."

Sam studied her hands in her lap with a tense expression. "I felt like you were calling out. I just _knew_ you needed help."

"Yeah," Tucker agreed. "Like how I always just _know_ where you guys are. I knew something was wrong."

Danny smiled. "And you dropped everything and came running."

"Yes," they said in unison.

"Aww," he crooned, settling his head back down on the ice pack, and closed his eyes. "I love you guys."

Sam sighed and Tucker patted his arm. "We love you too, man."

"Can you watch him for a few minutes, Tucker?" Sam asked and he felt her weight disappear from the bed. "I didn't exactly tell my parents I was going anywhere. Or grab shoes."

"Yeah, sure"

"Don't let him fall asleep. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Got it."

The sound of her transformation drew Danny's open once more. Her hair was back to normal. Well, normal for her ghost form, which was exactly the style it had been in when the accident happened. Her makeup was gone, too, and it was just the lipstick again—not her favorite purple, which he remembered her wearing that day, but black. Funny how that all worked. But apart from her face, she looked the same as him. Black jumpsuit, white gloves, belt, and boots. He'd given her and Tucker two of his suits to wear when they came in the portal with him. What would she look like if he'd given her Jazz's old one? Or one of the dozen some odd orange ones they had for visitors?

Maybe it was the concussion talking but it struck him then just how alike they looked in ghost form. Tucker would, too, probably, if he could get his ghost form to come out and play, differences in skin color aside.

Sam floated into the air and Danny realized she hadn't answered his question before. "Saaam, I wasn't kidding earlier."

She paused, confused, and he saw the exact moment comprehension dawned. "Wait you were serious?"

"As a head injury."

She frowned at him but she didn't seem angry. More…contemplative. That was good, right? After a few moments, she sighed. "Ask me again when your head feels better and we'll see."

That was fair. "Okay!"

Sam turned intangible and flew through his ceiling without another word. It was quiet for exactly one full second and then the bed creaked as Tucker slowly leaned into his field of view. Danny shifted his head so he could look at him properly.

"Soooooo…."

"What?"

"What did you ask her?"

"To the dance."

Tucker let out a noise somewhere between a snort and a wheeze and honestly it might have been both trying to happen at the same time. Danny frowned. (Pouted, more like, but he wouldn't ever admit it.)

"What?"

"You got thrown into a wall by a giant dragon then asked Sam to the dance after she came and rescued you?"

"Yeah?"

"Oh my god. Danny."

* * *

Tucker and Sam stayed with him well into the evening. Long enough for Maddie to decide to have them stay for dinner before they headed home. About three hours after the time of injury, Danny was feeling well enough to be up and moving around. The swelling had gone down after an hour and took most of the pain with it. His head no longer felt fuzzy, either. By morning he'd be completely fine at this rate, which, from what he knew about head injuries, was not humanly possible. Apparently they weren't just robust as half-ghosts.

They worked on their homework together as Danny's condition improved, and, since Sam brought her laptop, he didn't need to go back down to the lab to use the computer. With his luck, his father would catch something else while he was down there. But, of course, the more his head cleared, the more his mouth-to-brain filter reasserted itself. And with that came the mortification. He didn't regret asking Sam to the dance…but, damn, why'd he have to go and do it like _that_? Idiot.

Going to the dance could be fun, a nice way to de-stress for an evening. And for all she'd been complaining about the dance before, she hadn't outright said _no…._ Did that mean she wasn't as opposed to the idea of going as she'd been letting on? And what about Tucker? Sure he hadn't been going out of his way to find a date or buy a ticket but he was more wrung out than either of them by all this. And if they all went as friends…!

He waited until after dinner to ask. Sam and Tucker were still wary around his parents and this would be the longest they had been around them since the Accident. He didn't want to add any potential awkwardness to their already inflated nerves. So when they were back in his room packing up their things to leave, he struck.

"So, my head's feeling better," he began, and Sam stiffened but otherwise continued shoving her things into her backpack. Tucker, on the other hand paused, looked at Danny with a question written on his face, and glanced significantly at the door. Danny shook his head and motioned for him to wait. "Aaannnnd now that it is, I think we should all go to Homecoming together."

Sam whipped her head around.

Tucker straightened up. "I mean, are you sure it's a good idea? The dance in general. Not us all going together. What if there's a ghost attack or something?"

"It's not like they happen every night," Danny pointed out, "and it's our first high school dance. One night off isn't going to be the end of the world and I think it'd be fun! No dates, no pressure, just a couple friends having fun. And, let's be honest, we _need_ a break."

A small smile appeared on Sam's face. Tucker folded one arm across his chest and rubbed his chin with his other hand. "Do I have to wear a suit?"

"You better." Danny folded his arms. "And I'll have you know I am very high maintenance."

Sam let out a sputtering laugh. "Oh, what, was that supposed to be news?"

"Hey!"

Tucker grinned. "Alright, I'm in. Sam?"

Sam heaved a sigh that even Danny could tell was exaggerated. Her cheeks were pink again.

"Oh come on, _Sammy._ " Danny folded his hands together in front of his chest and gave her his best puppy dog eyes. "Come to the dance with your best friends!"

Tucker clasped his hands against his cheek and batted his eyes at her. "Pretty please?"

Sam put her hands on her hips. "Seriously, you guys?"

"Pleaaaassee," the boys chorused and she squinted at them.

"Fiiiine. Fine! But only because I haven't made plans yet!"

* * *

It took Danny until the literal moment they picked Sam up at her house to realize she'd probably wanted to go to the dance all along. Not even she could find a dress like that overnight. And after all that energy she'd put into insisting she didn't want to go—actually, for someone who supposedly didn't care, she'd brought it up a lot. Talk about mixed signals. Girls were so confusing.

But Sam looked prettier than he'd ever seen her and Tucker cleaned up nicely, too, even if he was still wearing his beret. So he offered them each one of his arms and they marched off to the school together. Literally, in Sam's case, because she'd worn her favorite boots under that dress. A beret, combat boots, and, well, he couldn't really judge them, could he, because he had a Fenton Fisher tucked away in his inner jacket pocket.

They arrived a few minutes after the scheduled start time to a massive line and muffled music in full swing. It seemed as if the whole school had turned up, minus Jazz. They kept their arms linked while they moved through the line and the librarian taking the tickets cooed over them for a few moments before ushering them in.

The gym was decked out in streamers, ribbons, and bunches of balloons that were definitely not the school colors. Off to one side of the room sat a long table covered from one end to the other in snacks and cups of punch scattered around a large punch bowl, which was being guarded by Ms. Tetslaff herself. Neither ghost nor man would make it past her. The punch would be safe throughout the night. Probably.

Tucker broke off from them with the promise to bring back snacks and punch, leaving Danny and Sam to mill about awkwardly near the door.

"Well," Danny said.

"Yep," Sam agreed.

They glanced at each other. The tension broke and they found themselves laughing at themselves and each other.

"So," Danny said once he got control of himself, "this is a Homecoming."

"This place looks ridiculous. Who even picked out this color scheme?" Sam gestured to a cluster of blue, red, and purple balloons nearby.

He nudged her elbow. "Hey, hey, we should be lucky they even had the budget left for this thing after they had to fix the kitchen and oh crap, Dash just walked in."

"Do not make eye contact," Sam warned, tightened her grip on his arm, and pulled him further away from the door. They kept to the wall, well out of sight from where the more rambunctious and social members of the student body would be congregating, knowing Tucker would be able to find them without a problem.

"So, wanna dance?" Danny asked.

"Eh, sure, why not? But I'm warning you right now, if the Macarena comes on, I'm _out._ "

Of course, everyone knew that when it came to the Macarena, it was not a matter of if but _when_. The DJ seemed to have wanted to give the stragglers plenty of time to turn up and at the forty-five minute mark, he started rolling out everyone's favorites. True to her word, the moment Sam recognized the opening notes of the Macarena, she disappeared off to the bathroom, leaving Danny and Tucker to abandon whatever remained of their dignity with the rest of the student body.

Sam was just finishing washing her hands when Paulina, Valerie, and Star walked in. She sent a quick prayer in both directions that the other girls would leave her be long enough for her to get out. But from the way Paulina's nose wrinkled at the sight of her, Sam knew it wasn't going to happen.

"You hiding from that, too?" Star asked, not unkindly, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb.

Or not? Sam turned the faucet off and smiled at her in the mirror. "Absolutely."

Star laughed and then disappeared into a stall. Valerie didn't even acknowledge Sam, just leaned against the wall near the door and stared out at the dance floor.

Paulina, on the other hand, decided she just had to open her mouth. "Nice dress, Sam, where'd you get it? The Halloween store?"

_And here we go_. Sam turned and flashed her a wicked grin. "Why, looking to upgrade yours?"

Valerie raised her eyebrows but didn't look around. Paulina scoffed. "I'm not sure I would call whatever you're wearing an upgrade from anything."

Sam rolled her eyes and started for the door. "Okay, Paulina. Well, when the day comes that I want an opinion from the shallow end of the gene pool, I'll be sure and let you know."

Valerie finally glanced at her then with eyes as round as saucers.

Paulina realized she'd been insulted just as Sam was brushing past her and she threw her arm out to stop her. "Oh no! You did _not_ just call me _shallow,_ did you?"

Sam looked down at the offending arm and then up at its owner. "If you mean, do I think I can stand in a puddle full of you and not get my feet wet, then yeah."

"Excuse me?!"

"You're excused," Sam retorted then ducked beneath her arm and stormed out of the bathroom, ignoring Paulina's demands for her to _get back here!_

The Macarena ended. Sam found Danny and Tucker right where she'd left them, out of breath but laughing. Danny had also apparently ditched his jacket while she was gone and Tucker was halfway to joining him, not a care in the world, either of them. She didn't leave their sides for the rest of the night.


	5. Fright or Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_its spooky season motherfuckers_ **
> 
> it has not been a month since i updated shut up 
> 
> "00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000" -- sincerely, my cat. Who am I to deny her a platform for her creativity?

When Tucker finally transformed, he wasn't even really _trying._ He was just sitting on the grass in the park late at night, watching the glowing forms of Danny and Sam fly circles around each other fifty feet in the air. And then, for a single instant, what he wanted more than anything else in the world was to join them. More than he wanted to protect their secret or their town, more than he wanted to study for their test tomorrow, fiddle with his PDA, or even draw his next breath.

And finally, _finally,_ his ghost half responded.

The flash of light startled him. He lifted his hand to rub at his eyes and froze when he saw a glowing white glove. It took him a few seconds to process what he was seeing, then he looked down at himself and the black and white jumpsuit identical to those of his friends above.

Tucker didn't waste another moment. He grinned, braced his feet against the ground, and then rocketed into the air. Flying, he quickly realized, was ten times easier in this form. His body wasn't nearly as heavy like this or maybe he was simply stronger, it was hard to say. But boy could he move!

Neither Danny nor Sam noticed his approach until he was right up on them. Sam spotted him first and gasped so loud that Danny whipped around in full battle mode. But his aggressive stance, along with his jaw, dropped immediately.

"T-Tucker!"

"You—!"

"I did it!" Tucker crowed, punching the air with both fists.

Sam zipped in a circle around him to get a good look at him. Not that there was much to look at, in Tucker's opinion, since their suits were completely identical. Well, almost identical. Tucker had been wearing his favorite beanie when he'd gone into the portal and unlike the clothes under the suit, it had converted over. Come to think of it, he hadn't actually taken a look at it when he was transforming in the beginning, only felt it. He could feel it now, too, and he reached up to pull it off. When it didn't immediately slip off his head, he felt a surge of panic and tugged harder. It came off...but he definitely hadn't imagined that moment of resistance. He filed that little piece of information away for later and held his beanie up for inspection.

Huh. It was white. He would've expected the colors to invert like the rest had, but maybe that wasn't how it worked?

Danny snickered. Tucker peered over his hat at him. "What?"

"Your hair is white."

"Uh, so's yours?" Tucker pointed out.

"Well yeah but yours is hidden under the hat so it—it just looked funny when you took it off." He snickered again. "I'm sorry."

Tucker shrugged and held his hat up so he could rub his cheek against it. Texture wise, didn't feel any different than before but the material itself seemed lighter. Weird. He shrugged once more to himself and put his hat back on. The moment it slid into place, a small tingle raced along his skin where the hat made contact.

Sam zipped around Tucker again, and her legs did that thing where they sort of fused to become a single wispy tail. Danny did it sometimes, too. They had to know they were doing it but was it a conscious choice? Instinctive? He looked down at his legs and wondered if they'd do it, too.

"How are you doing that?" he asked. Sam drew herself upright next to Danny and cocked her head. He pointed at her tail. "How do you make it change?"

Sam looked down at her tail and pursed her lips. "Y'know, I'm honestly not sure. I just do it? It's like breathing."

"You'll get used to it," Danny assured him. "In this form, all the stuff we have to focus on in human form is like breathing. Intangibility, invisibility, all of it."

Tucker raised his hand to eye level and the thought that he wanted it to be intangible had barely formed when his body obeyed him. He startled and his hand blipped back to normal. "Freaky. But awesome."

"Oh, you wanna see awesome? We can show you awesome." Danny darted forward and tugged on his hand. Sam looked in the direction Danny was indicating and grinned.

"What? Where are we going?"

"You'll see! Come on!"

Flying as a human took a certain level of concentration and will. Not only did he have to want it, he had to focus on the place within him where his ghost side lurked and let its power flow through him. Flight as a human was a chore. Flight as a ghost was freedom. It was joy, exhilaration, fearlessness. It was drawing a breath and letting it out. It was effortless. It was _living_.

And his friends, they knew it, they'd embraced it. They kept pace with him as they flew, in tune with the sky and each other. It was as fascinating up close as it had been from below, the way Danny and Sam could flit around each other without colliding. Their wispy tails flicked and flickered, never the same shape or length from one moment to the next. They flew close enough to him that their arms would bump and brush every so often, silently urging him on.

Their destination quickly came into view: the bay.

Danny arced his body and dove for the water in one smooth moment. Tucker tried to mirror him but ended up doing a somersault in the air and rolled off course. Then Sam was there steadying him with her hands on his shoulders.

"Easy," she cautioned and then put her fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle in Danny's direction. Turning back to Tucker, she squeezed his shoulder. "At that speed, the slightest shift in your shoulders can change your entire trajectory. So when you want to do a dive like that—"

Danny flew up beside them, concerned. "Everything okay?"

"Just teaching him how to dive," Sam explained. "He did the same thing you did the first few times. So, Tucker, if you want to change direction like that, you have to roll your body from head to toe. If you stay bent, you'll end up flipping like that."

"And don't forget the arms." Danny held his out in front of him. "We don't just stick our arms out like this 'cos it looks cool—which it does— _but_ , if you lead with your hands, it's easier for the rest of your body to follow. Does that make sense?"

Tucker pressed his lips together, running through what they'd told him once more. "I think so. I just need to try it."

His friends grinned at him and Sam clapped him on the back. Danny began to drift backwards. "It's easier to fly down an angle, like this." He held up his hand and tilted it down at about a forty-five degree angle. "And when we get down to the water you'll want to basically do this…." He moved his hand downward at the same angle then curved his fingers upward and the rest of his hand followed, continuing out parallel to the ground.

Tucker nodded. "Got it."

Danny took off again, slower than before, and this time Sam brought up the rear with Tucker between them. When Danny arched his back to dive, Tucker watched closely, and then repeated the motion and this time he found himself shooting towards the surface of the water instead of aimlessly through the air. He felt himself beginning to pick up speed as they hurtled towards the water but Danny remained a steady distance ahead so Tucker didn't slow, and he risked a quick glance over his shoulder to confirm Sam was still there.

He looked down just in time to see Danny level out with the surface of the water. Tucker licked his lips, exhaled, and braced himself. The water was thirty feet away. Twenty. Ten—

Water sprayed into the air from the force of his descent but he did not fall in. He let out a whoop and Sam laughed behind him. Danny circled back around to meet them, grinning from ear to ear, and pointed down at the water. Though what lay below the surface was nothing more than indistinguishable darkness, the surface of it glittered under the light of the moon and their own ghostly auras.

He lowered his hand towards the water and let his fingers skim along the surface, sending up a steady stream of water droplets as they flew.

Sam shot past them, going intangible, and dove into the water. She reappeared a moment or two later twenty feet ahead of them, shooting out from the water like a dolphin. She flipped over mid-air and continued flying along on her back and waved at them.

"Alright," Tucker shouted over the wind, "you were right! This is awesome!"

"Told ya!"

And it probably would've stayed that way, if they hadn't circled back around towards the marina. Because that was when their ghost senses went off.

* * *

The spirits of the dead were as myriad as they were numerous, but every last one of them fell into one of two categories: Those Who Remembered and Those Who Forgot. From there it got a bit messy.

Those Who Remembered were, as implied, those who could recall any significant portions of their human lives. How much of the human personality remained varied from ghost to ghost but, if suitably motivated, any of Those Who Remembered could tell you of the mortal they had once been. The Lunch Lady who had once been a woman named Dorothy was but one of infinite examples.

Those Who Forgot were the exact opposites. Any ghostly scholar worth their ectoplasm knew that the only thing strong enough to erase one's entire sense of self from their core was the will of the person themselves. The Forgotten had done so by choice. Those whose desire for a new life free of their old one won out in those eternal instants betwixt mortal death and their spirit taking root in the Zone. With no facet to Form around, these ghosts were as infants upon formation, slates blank of everything but the most basic of information, the most poignant of which was either the cause of their death or that which they had craved most in life. Hardly fair, given that they could not remember these lives, but it was what it was.

The Box Ghost was one such spirit. An absolute blank slate from the first, neither knowing nor caring of what came before, except that boxes had been involved. Or maybe it was a singular box. Who knew? He did not. (Of course, most modern ghosts could take one look at him and know what he had been in life but none of them bothered to tell him. It wouldn't matter. Also, he was annoying.)

Did Ol' Boxy care? Nope. He didn't care for much if boxes weren't involved. A bit on the extreme end of things, even for one of the Forgotten, but he was annoying and nobody could be arsed to deal with him long enough to help. And, so, he was left to his own square devices.

Devices which, unfortunately for the three new half-ghosts, now extended to the mortal world and its plethora of objects both cardboard and square.

* * *

"BEWARE!"

"Well, guy's got guts." Danny muttered. Sure, he, Sam, and Tucker didn't look like much, but there were three of them and this blue guy was alone. And nowhere near intimidating enough to start off with such a warning.

"THIS IS MY WAREHOUSE! GET YOUR OWN!"

"And pipes," Sam added.

"Why is he yelling?" Tucker asked no one in particular, then raised his voice. "Dude, chill! You wanna let the whole marina know you're here?"

"NO! I WISH FOR YOU TO LEAVE!"

"Yeah, no, not gonna happen." Danny folded his arms. "You need to go back to the Ghost Zone, A-S-A-P."

"NEVER!"

And the ghost darted through the wall behind him.

Danny heaved a sigh. "Just once, I wish that would work."

Sam clapped him on the back. "At least this will only take a minute."

"But you don't even have your bat." Tucker pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but there's three of us now! And we have our thermoses." To prove her point, she unclipped hers from her belt and waved it in the air. "Come on. Let's do this."

The building the blue-collar ghost had disappeared into turned out to be a processing warehouse for a local shipping company, filled to the brim with countless cardboard boxes. The three half-ghosts came through the ceiling, hoping to spot the ghost from above before he could spot them, and settled down on the rafters.

They spotted him immediately. Not just because he was glowing. He was taking absolutely no pains to hide himself. He drifted along the rows of boxes, humming to himself while he looked up and down the stacks. Nothing menacing at all.

"What's a ghost doing haunting a place like this?" Tucker wondered, his voice scarcely more than a whisper.

"Uh, Tucker? We fought a ghost haunting our school's cafeteria," Sam pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but she worked there all her life."

"Well, maybe this guy worked here."

"What are the odds that we get two ghosts in the same month who died in Amity Park?"

"Well, maybe it was somewhere else," Danny reasoned, "and this was just convenient. It doesn't seem haunted though. Not yet."

"Which means he must've just showed up," Sam reasoned. "'Cos if he'd come out of the portal while you were at school, this place would be lit up by now."

"Give it an hour," Danny muttered. "Alright. Let's do this."

"Do we really have to, though?" Tucker asked. "He's just…chilling."

"Yeah, and what do you think happens when this place opens tomorrow and humans start showing up? Either he'll chase them out or take someone over, like the Lunch Lady wanted to."

"I still don't get how she planned to possess someone," Sam muttered.

"Me either, but, point is: he's gotta go."

"Alright. I'll follow your lead."

Danny pretended not to notice the significant glance she threw Tucker who sighed. "Yeah, alright. So how we doing this?"

"Sam, give Tucker your Thermos. You and I will fly down there and distract him while Tucker, you sneak up behind him and catch him."

"And how do we distract him?" Sam asked, passing the Thermos to Tucker, who accepted it eagerly.

"I think just us being here will be distraction enough. Come on!"

He dove down from the rafters with Sam right on his tail. They flew down towards the ghost who, still, did not realize he wasn't alone. That, or he didn't care that he was treating them to a hummed rendition of _The Wheels on the Bus_.

"What's up?" Danny called.

The ghost startled and spun around, flinging his hands out wide, and bellowed, "NO! YOU CANNOT BE IN HERE!"

"Sorry not sorry, but we are."

The ghost looked baffled. Nothing at all like the Lunch Lady. He was territorial for sure but he didn't seem to know what to do when his initial blustering didn't work.

"I'm gonna regret this," Sam muttered, then asked, "Who are you?"

The ghost puffed out his chest and placed his hands on his hips. "I AM THE BOX GHOST! I HAVE POWER OVER ALL CONTAINERS CARDBOARD AND SQUARE! WHO ARE YOU!?"

Danny and Sam glanced at each other. "Uh, I'm Phantom and this is Wraith, we—"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH MY BOXES?"

"Nothing—" Danny started to say but Sam cut him off.

"These aren't your boxes though. Come tomorrow, they'll all be moving someplace else."

"WELL, DUH! AND THEN NEW BOXES WILL ARRIVE! ALL FOR ME!"

Danny sighed, dragging his hand across his face. "Could you just, maybe, please stop yelling?"

The Box Ghost threw his arms and legs out wide. "NEVER!"

"Okay we're done here. Hey Tucker, lets go!"

Tucker appeared directlybehind the Box Ghost with a grin on his face. "And goodnight everybody!"

The Box Ghost whirled around with a yelp, which elongated into a furious wail as he was caught by the blue beam of the Thermos. Tucker capped the Thermos and grinned smugly.

"Perimeter secure."

"'Perimeter secure'?" Sam scoffed. "What are you, a Navy Seal?"

"No." Tucker tossed her the Thermos, which she quickly swapped with Danny for his empty one. He was the one who had to put the ghost back in the Zone, after all. "But now that I am a full member of this team, it's time to start going by my code name."

"Which is…? I swear, if you expect me to call you ' _Ghouly'—_ "

Tucker shook his head. "No, no. I got one better." He paused, hands in front of him, then flicked his fingers out for dramatic effect. "Specter."

Danny and Sam considered it, and him. They glanced at each other. Danny shrugged. "I like it," he said. "It works."

Sam nodded slowly for a few moments. "Wraith, Phantom, and Specter. Ghostly protectors of Amity Park."

"That's us!" Tucker crowed.

"Kill me now."

* * *

Two hundred feet away, another ghost watched the girl's mouth form those words through a pair of binoculars and chuckled to himself. No, he would not kill her. He wouldn't kill any of them. Half ghost, half human, those children were the rarest creatures in existence. Whichever he took would be the jewel of his collection.

At first the hunter thought to take the boy and girl he had heard about. They were obviously pair bonded, and if the rumors were true, where one was, the other was not far behind.

But, then, tonight, he saw the third boy transform and realized they weren't a pair but a pack! How fortuitous! He couldn't take them all, of course. Only a hunter of poor principles would take an entire population for himself. One would do. So long as he left two of them free, the girl and one of the boys, there would eventually be little ones. It was nature's course, after all.

Ah, but, which to choose? That question had plagued him as he followed them from a distance. If the rumors were true, they could sense other ghosts who got close. Didn't want to alert them to his presence just yet.

After just a few minutes of observation, he was sure he knew the hierarchy within their group. The darker boy was their junior, clumsy and unsure in his movements, relying on guidance and instruction from the other two to even navigate competently. He had been under the impression they were all the same age but perhaps not. Or perhaps he was weaker than the other two. After all, he had known nothing of him before tonight.

Capturing him would not prove any manner of challenge. There was no thrill in capturing weak prey and these children had proven themselves quite capable for ones so young.

The other boy, then. The paler one. The unspoken leader.

Yes. He would make a fine addition to the collection.

* * *

Danny woke up in a good mood. Last night couldn't have gone better. Tucker had finally transformed, they'd gone flying for over an hour, the one ghost they encountered hadn't resulted in a fight, and he had enough steam left to finish his homework before crashing around eleven.

Today was going to be a good day. He could feel it.

His mother was tinkering at the breakfast table as usual and his father was in the middle of devouring a bowl of cereal beside her. Danny grabbed the milk and cereal box and poured himself some of each, then sat down at the table across from his mother.

"You're looking awfully cheerful this morning," Maddie noted, peering at him from behind her red goggles. "Get a good night's sleep?"

Danny smiled, his mouth full of cereal, and nodded. He swallowed and pointed at the device she was working on. "What's that?"

"It's called the Ghost Gabber!" Jack boomed, startling them both. "It takes the mysterious sounds that ghosts make and translates them into words you and I use every day."

He reached for it but Maddie held up her hand to stop him. "It _will_ , once it's finished. The circuit breaker still needs some work. Don't want to risk an ectoplasmic power surge frying it!"

Danny frowned a little but shrugged and took another bite of cereal. Ghosts weren't incomprehensible, at least none that he'd met so far, so it would probably be another bust.

"Aw, Maddie, it should be safe enough for a little demonstration, right?"

Maddie pursed her lips for a moment then nodded, withdrawing her hands. "Alright, but only for a moment!"

Jack grinned and snatched it up, flipping the power switch in the same moment, and held it up to his mouth. The two lights on top of it flicked on and off and it began to emit a steady beeping. "I am Jack Fenton."

A pause, then the same robotic voice he was used to from most of their talking inventions answered: " _No spectral frequencies detected._ "

Smiling, Jack held it out to Danny. "Now go on, say something!"

_Crud._

A wordless scream of delight saved Danny from having to tempt fate and Jazz came hurtling into a kitchen in a blur of ginger and blue. "They! Said! YES!"

Danny pushed the Ghost Gabber away from his face and quipped, "Who said yes? The person you asked if you were a conceited snob?"

"No, _Genius Magazine_ said yes!" She thrust a magazine out for them to see. Pale green and adorned with gold, it looked fancy, he had to admit, but his interest dipped when he saw the letters 'IQ' right in the middle. "They got my letter and they wanna put Mom on the cover!" She squealed, hugging the magazine to her chest.

Maddie tapped her chin. "I think I've heard of _Genius Magazine._ "

"What is it?" Jack asked. "…Is it the swimsuit issue?"

Both teenagers shuddered.

"Dad _no_ ," Jazz snapped while Danny wrinkled his nose in revulsion. " _Genius Magazine_ is for women geniuses, by women geniuses, and about _women_ geniuses! Also never, ever imply anything about mom appearing on a swimsuit issue. Ever. For the rest of my life."

"Seconded." Danny piped up.

Jack grinned again. "Oh, you kids would be surprised. Back in the day, your mother was—"

"WOW!" Danny yelled, pushing back from the table. "Look at the time I would love to stay and chat but I'm meeting Tucker and Sam before school so I gotta go congrats on the magazine thing or whatever Jazz BYE!"

He could've flown out of there, and it wouldn't have been fast enough. Still, he kept his body visible and his feet on the ground until he was out the door and safely in the alley beside his house. Then he transformed and took off invisibly towards school.

His mom getting recognized by some prestigious magazine was cool. Being put on the cover was even cooler. He wondered what Jazz had told the editors about their family, though. The scientific community didn't have a high opinion of people in his parents' field. She must have omitted a few things or stretched the truth. Oh well, not his concern. His concern was the midterms he had looming.

Right now they were averaging one encounter per day. He and Sam had been taking turns dealing with the ones that popped up near school and now that Tucker was officially on the roster, the number of times they would have to leave during or outright ditch class would be lower per person. If they were lucky and played their cards right, they could get through the semester without failing. Maybe by then his parents would have an actual working lock on the portal and the ghosts would stop coming.

Midterms were spread throughout the week to avoid overwhelming them too much. Of course, those were considerations made with human students in mind, and human students didn't have super powers or have to deal with errant spirits popping up at all hours. The half-ghosts expected the week to be a bit crazier for them. But, hey, there were three of them now, and they could take proper turns on ghost duty. Or so they told themselves.

The first two days of midterms passed without incident. The ghost scene was quiet. Hauntingly quiet, as Danny might say. (Which he did, to Sam's disgust.)

A ghost lion turned up near Sam's house on the third evening but the worst part of that was the verbal thrashing she gave Danny for allowing the ghost to sneak past him. Like it was _his_ fault his ghost sense didn't wake him out of a dead (ha ha) sleep. It happened again the next morning, too, with a ghost tiger near Tucker's. Except Danny had been wide awake this time and he was absolutely sure that his ghost sense had not gone off. Which meant either it and the lion had gotten out at the same time, or these animals had another way out of the Ghost Zone. Danny zipped over to Tucker's with the thermos to trap the ghost then zipped back home to finish getting ready for school.

That evening, Danny's ghost sense went off while he was working on his homework in his room. He sighed, grabbed the thermos, and transformed. He checked the lab first, invisibly, and sure enough the portal was wide open, and both his parents were in there. Danny sighed. His dad was one thing, but how had his mom failed to notice a ghost sneaking past her less than ten feet away?

 _And this,_ he thought, _is why we can't leave the ghost hunting to them_.

Even though his ghost sense had not gone off again, he could still sense that the culprit was nearby. Withdrawing from the lab, he headed up and out of the house, and several dozen feet into the air to survey the neighborhood. The green and white wolf wasn't too difficult to spot, nor did it seem to be taking any pains to conceal itself. He wasn't surprised. None of the animal ghosts they encountered so far had been anything more than dead versions of their living counterparts, showing no sentience or intelligence beyond the expected norm.

Danny cracked his knuckles and dove after it.

* * *

The hunter watched from a safe distance.

When he unleashed the lion on the female the night before, he had done so with the intention of observing her capabilities, logging the leader male's response time to the threat, and observing their teamwork. What he hadn't expected was for the female take down the lion herself with some manner of black baton. She then visited the leader male's home directly, likely to return the specimen to the Ghost Zone herself. Following her discreetly, the hunter discovered that the leader male had been sleeping the whole time.

Her ferocity was admittedly impressive and she displayed no signs of hesitation but otherwise her performance was underwhelming. She did not utilize any form of ectoplasmic energy, not even the most fundamental of blasts. Was she flawed? Disabled in some way? Or did she deem the lion so far beneath her that it wasn't worth it? All viable considerations.

The junior male had taken the tiger's appearance with significantly less grace. And he didn't fight it so much as he kept it busy. He used a handheld device, likely one of those _phone_ things, and kept trying to spray…something at the ghost from a tiny canister. Whatever it was, it either had no effect or was not finding its mark. Two minutes later after the boy put the phone away, the leader male had come tearing in to deal with the tiger.

His prior observations had been more accurate than he'd realized. The junior male really was quite helpless. All signs indicated that they had Formed at the same time so why was this one significantly weaker? None of them displayed any ecto-energy abilities but at least the leader male and female could fight! The hunter considered killing him just to put him out of his misery.

Each altercation had given the hunter valuable information. Enough to exploit. Weak or no, the halfbreeds had numbers and containment devices. If he attempted to capture one of them from their midst, it would lead to an all-out brawl, and he was not interested in such a wager. No, he would isolate the leader male from the rest.

So he chose three of his finest specimens, waited for the halfbreeds to leave their place of human education and part ways, then released them. To the female he sent a horse so swift that the hunter himself had needed to rely on traps to catch it. To the junior male, an eagle with talons sharp enough to pierce the hunter's armor. And, finally, he returned to the leader male's home and released a wolf. Eight feet tall, elegant and strong, once the leader of a pack of his own before the hunter had captured him.

The leader male had taken longer than expected to emerge from his home but once he had, he located the wolf with ease. As the hunter expected, the leader male did not hesitate to charge and the wolf, sensing the threat, rose to meet the challenge.

The hunter smiled and moved in.


	6. Time for the Haunter to become the Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ghost's answering smile would have made a normal person shiver. "I am Skulker, the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter, and a collector of things rare and unique. And you, ghost child, are that and more!"
> 
> "Uh, thanks?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So _gimmie the yeet boys and free my soul i wanna get tossed in a fuckin hole and drift away_.

Danny wasn't sure how it happened. One second he was chasing a dire wolf across the rooftops of his neighborhood and the next he was caught in a glowing blue net. His cheek burned where it had scraped across rough roofing tiles and the fibers of the net dug painfully into his skin as he tried to wriggle himself free, to no avail. But who could've shot him? Even if his parents had somehow realized what was going on there was no way they could've gotten high enough. And their nets were green, not whatever this blue was—

"Hello, ghost child."

Danny tensed at the unfamiliar voice. Smooth, masculine, practically a purr, yet more menacing than anything he'd ever heard in his life. Grunting, Danny managed to flip himself onto his back, and looked up into the face of his attacker. At first glance, it was some sort of giant angry robot, but its mane and goatee were made of vicious green flames, the same color as its pupil-less eyes, and its entire body radiated a faint glowing aura, just like every other ghost. Except unlike every other ghost, this one was attacking him deliberately and without provocation.

"Wh—who are you?!" he snapped, hoping he sounded braver than he felt. "What do you want?!"

The ghost's answering smile would have made a normal person shiver. "I am Skulker, the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter, and a collector of things rare and unique. And you, ghost child, are that and more!"

"Uh, thanks?"

"Pity, though. As the alpha male of your little group, I had hoped you would put up more of a fight, at least more than the female would."

Danny's breath hitched. There was a lot to unpack in that sentence but there was only one person he could be referring to. "What did you do to her?" he snapped.

"The female? Rest assured, child, I have done nothing to harm her. But, in case you're entertaining any hopes of a rescue, I've sent her on a merry chase. Her and that weakling. By the time they realize you're missing, you'll already be in your new home, ghost child."

Well, that didn't sound concerning at all. He could feel Sam and Tucker off in the distance and, if he focused, he could tell they were both in motion, but neither of them were calling out like they'd described so he could only assume they were okay for the moment.

"My _name_ ," he growled, "is Phantom!"

He turned intangible and dropped through the roof. Re-orienting himself before he was even in the room below, he gauged roughly where Skulker was, and shot back up through the ceiling. The ghost was still there, baffled, and Danny's fist collided with his chin with enough force to send the other ghost flying.

"And I'm not going anywhere with you!"

He didn't wait around to see what happened next and sped off in the opposite direction.

 _Sam, Tucker_ , he thought as hard as he could. _We have a problem. We have a serious problem! Help help help!_

Behind him, Skulker roared wordlessly.

Danny let out a yelp and turned himself invisible. Hopefully that would be enough for now. He had to get to his friends. The ghost hadn't come after him until he was sure they would be alone. That had to mean something. If he could just get to them then—then he'd be safe and they could go from there. Right? Right.

 _He called me the alpha male,_ Danny thought and then shuddered at the implications. That ghost, that hunter, had been watching them long enough to read their dynamics. Not that he thought himself to be any sort of 'alpha male,' but with Tucker being so new to things, he might seem that way in comparison. But he knew where Danny lived. He probably knew where Sam and Tucker lived, too.

He risked a glance over his shoulder. The ghost wasn't anywhere in sight but that meant absolutely nothing, but he could feel Sam coming closer so his call must have worked. Tucker didn't seem to be coming towards him but he wasn't moving further away, either. He exhaled in relief and steered himself towards Tucker. Sam would catch up in no time.

As he neared the park, Danny realized that Tucker must have tried to lure the 'distraction' away from people. Smart idea, especially now that this big ghost was here. Danny glanced over his shoulder again. Skulker still wasn't visible but he could see Sam as a smudge of darkness against the setting sun. He wanted to signal her somehow but he couldn't risk becoming visible. Not until he got to Tucker.

He found him in the middle of the woods grappling with a bright green eagle the size of a Great Dane whose shrieks could wake the dead. On the ground, his arms locked around the eagle's neck, and his legs around curled around the eagle's. The eagle was trying its best to dislodge him by flapping its ridiculously huge wings.

" _Tucker-I-mean-Specter_!" Danny shouted in a rush, reaching for the thermos on belt. "Fly up!"

Tucker's head whipped from side to side in confusion but then Danny's words registered. He released the eagle, shoved its body away from his own, and rocketed into the air. The eagle righted itself far too quickly to be natural and its beady red eyes locked onto its prey once more. It didn't see the blue beam until it had already been enveloped and it screamed the whole way in.

Capping the thermos, Danny let go of his invisibility and landed on the ground, looking up into the sky for either of his friends or Skulker. No sign of the ghost or Sam, but Tucker was floating about thirty feet above him.

"Dude!" Tucker yelled. "What's going on?! Are you okay?!"

"NO!" Danny replied then hooked the thermos back to his belt. "Get down here now!"

Something in his voice must've convinced Tucker of the seriousness of the situation because he flew down without another word. Sam cam hurtling into the clearing a moment later with her teeth bared and most of her hair aflame.

"What the **hell** , Danny?! There's this stupid horse running around and—"

"It's a trap!" Danny interjected, grabbing her forearms, and pulled her down to the ground beside them. "Both of those ghosts were just to keep you guys busy. There's another, a big robot ghost who caught me in a net and tried to kidnap me!"

"What?" they both yelped at the same pitch.

"Sam, were you visible on the way here?"

Sam sputtered incomprehensibly for a moment and then her teeth clicked together and she nodded.

"Crap," Danny whispered. "We have to hide. Grab my hands and go invisible."

They did as instructed, Sam taking his right and Tucker his left, and disappeared. Like this, they could at least see each other despite their bodies being invisible to the rest of the world, at least they hoped. They hadn't had a chance to really test it yet. (Not that it'd do much good if the ghost had heat sensors or something but Danny was trying _not_ to think about that.)

They lifted off the ground and Danny led them through the trees. "We have to stay hidden. He could be anywhere."

"We'd sense him," Sam pointed out but Danny shook his head.

"Not if he doesn't get close enough we won't. He's been _watching us_ for who knows how long."

Tucker shuddered. "Okay, I do _not_ like that."

"It's not you he's after, though, Tuck."

"Didn't feel like it just now."

"That was just to keep you busy. He told me himself."

"Okay, hold on. Time out," Sam interrupted sharply. "You said there's a big ghost robot after you?"

Danny nodded. "He said his name was…. Skulker? I think? Maybe Shulker. But he's a hunter and collector of rare stuff, and I'm pretty sure he knows what we are, and I think he wants to freaking… _keep_ me or something!"

Sam scoffed. "So he knows where we live, what we are, and can stalk us from a distance. Terrific."

"Then we shouldn't be running," said Tucker, surprising them both. "He'll just wait until we're alone and try again."

Danny groaned. He was right. Until they taught this ghost the lesson of his afterlife, they wouldn't have any peace. Best case scenario, he'd keep releasing animals from the ghost zoo or whatever. Worst case, Danny would end up in the zoo himself. They had to fight and they had to make it on _their_ terms this time.

* * *

"You kids need anything before we go to bed?" Maddie asked in the doorway, smiling at the three teenagers scattered across her son's room.

Danny smiled at his mother. "Nah, we're good. Thanks, Mom."

"Alright. Don't stay up too late, and no shouting if you start playing video games."

"Us?" Tucker clutched at his chest. "We would never!"

She gave him a look. "Of course not. Silly me." Then she smiled at Danny. "See you in the morning, sweetheart."

Danny's embarrassed expression was only slightly forced. "Goodnight, Mom."

Maddie left, pulling the door shut behind her, and the three teenagers held their breath until the sound of her footsteps faded and they heard the door to her bedroom close. Then they exhaled in unison and it was back to business. Tucker pulled the Fenton Grappler from where he'd wedged it between his leg and the beanbag chair. Sam's thermos returned to visibility on her lap. Danny pulled his thermos out from beneath his pillow.

"Man, I'm glad your mom actually knocks," Sam said, setting the bat on Danny's desk. "My parents just barge in if I don't lock the door."

Danny grimaced in sympathy. It was an absolute miracle she hadn't been caught floating above her bed when she was still doing that most nights. Their intrusive behavior was one of the big reasons Danny and Tucker had never been invited over.

Neither of his friends had stayed the night since their recovery period after the accident. The idea of sleeping in the same house as ghost hunters was unsettling for them, and Danny knew where they were coming from. But with Sam's house completely off limits, and Tucker's parents' habit of engaging with their activities, Danny's house was the only option. At least his parents didn't check on him while he was sleeping.

Not that they intended to do any sleeping for a while.

Ten minutes after Jack and Maddie went to bed, they could still hear Jazz moving around in her room but Danny was reasonably certain she wouldn't bother them. So he turned a movie on and set the volume to low while Sam and Tucker unrolled their sleeping bags on the floor. They shoved their bags inside to make it look like they were in there and Danny stuffed some things under his bedsheets. Just in case.

Finished, the three half-ghosts transformed across the room from the windows, just in case anyone happened to be looking up. Danny couldn't help but note, and not for the first time, that the moment Sam's ghostly form took hold she rose a few inches off the ground. It wasn't something he did, or Tucker, now that he was actually able to transform. He wasn't sure if she was aware of it, but considering how often she'd floated while sleeping, it wouldn't surprise him if she wasn't. For all that she was the most pragmatic of their group, she almost never had both feet on the ground anymore.

Tucker hooked the Fenton Grappler to his belt and Sam attached her thermos to hers then reached up to adjust the strap of her new holster on her shoulder. A recent acquisition though he had no idea from where, it was black and held her bat securely against her back.

Danny shook his head to clear it, looked between his friends, and exhaled. "We ready for this?"

"To kick the butt of a ghost who captures sentient beings for his own personal menagerie?" Sam scoffed. "Danny, I was _born_ ready."

Tucker raised his eyebrows at her. "I don't think I'm _that_ ready, but let's do this."

"It's time for the hunter to become the hunted," Danny declared, going intangible. The others followed suit and they slipped out of Danny's house entirely unnoticed.

Sam figured those ghosts from before were still loose in the city, assuming Skulker had not simply caught them himself, and Danny was prepared to bet that he hadn't. They were the perfect bait after all. They were all sure that if the ghosts had been causing havoc that it would've at least made the nightly news, which meant that if they were still loose, they were somewhere they weren't going to be noticed. Namely, the park.

Danny knew Skulker was probably watching his house already, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. If he thought they were just going out to hunt the other ghosts, he would probably follow, lest an opportune moment pass him by. They just needed to make sure he didn't strike until they were well away from Danny's house. Preferably away from people altogether.

The moment they phased through the walls, they were off like a shot towards the park. They kept close, practically on top of each other, in case Skulker tried to pull anything while they were commuting. So close, in fact, that when a Casper High senior smoking on his rooftop saw them and snapped a photo on his Nokia to show to his friends the next day, they looked like a single glowing blob.

They had barely entered the park when their ghost senses went off and it didn't take them more than a few seconds to spot the ghost horse galloping across the lawn like it was free on a prairie.

"Careful," Sam warned and they slowed. "That's not even half as fast as it was going earlier. We need to surround it if we're going to have a chance."

Danny pressed his lips together thoughtfully and tried to remember what his Aunt Alicia had told him about the hunting the last time they were in Spittoon. Most of it was where to aim if you were trying to bring down a deer or coyote but there had been some useful in her brutally blunt lecture.

He folded his arms and eyed both his friends critically. "Sam—"

"Code-names," Tucker reminded him.

He sighed. " _Wraith_ , you're the fastest. You think you could herd it?"

Sam quirked her lips and mirrored his position. "What are you thinking?"

"If you can herd it towards _Specter_ and I, we could capture it in a thermos."

She narrowed her eyes at the horse and said nothing for a long moment, then nodded and unclipped the thermos from her belt. "Yeah, I can do that. Here catch." She tossed it at Tucker. "But where am I herding it to?"

"Well, assuming it doesn't leave the park, it has to turn around at some point, right?"

They chose the playground, figuring the ghost would see it coming and swerve to avoid the gravel and twisted metal contraptions in favor of open grass. And if not, well, then they could pincer it in the middle. Danny hid on one side of the park under a seesaw and Tucker on the other, half-intangible beneath the merry-go-round. They knew the moment the horse spotted Sam by the enraged neigh which pierced the night without warning. Then silence.

They waited. Sam was coming closer.

Danny's ghost sense went off, and he tensed, bracing himself for action.

The horse came galloping over the hill faster than a race car, with Sam hot on its heels. Hooves? Even from a distance, Danny could tell it was _pissed_. He flipped the cap off the thermos and coiled to spring the second the horse chose its path.

It turned intangible and barreled onto the playground without any sign of slowing. Danny didn't wait, he launched himself off the ground, his hand already on the trigger. The horse swung its head towards him and brayed, a deep, ugly sound and to Danny's great surprise, it skidded to a halt right then and there and reared into the air. If it was trying to intimidate him, it worked. Danny yelped and swerved upwards. Ten feet into the air he remembered what he was supposed to be doing and squeezed the button on the thermos for dear life. The blue beam exploded outwards towards the horse —

_Hold on why is it coming at me—_

"WHAT THE—"

* * *

"—HELL DID YOU DO, TUCKER!?"

That…was a good question.

Tucker looked at the spot where Danny had been floating a moment before and then at the spot where the horse had been rearing up. Neither were there anymore. He looked at Danny's still-smoking thermos on the ground. He looked down at the smoking thermos in his hands, at the little green light on the side which indicated it was in use. Looked back at Sam. Licked his lips.

"Caught a ghost."

"Oh my god let him out!"

"Uh." Tucker looked down at the thermos. He hadn't had a chance to sit down and play with one of these yet. Danny promised he'd have his own as soon as his parents made more but that wasn't helpful _now_.

"There's a switch on the side," Sam said, pointing at the underside of the thermos, "that turns it from capture to release."

Tucker flipped it over, located the switch, then pressed the trigger button again. The thermos emitted a high whine like it was priming a charge and then it shuddered in his hands and _spat_ out a monochrome blur. The blur solidified into Danny .2 seconds before he smashed into the ground. Tucker surreptitiously capped the thermos and hid it behind his back while Sam floated over to the undignified heap of black and white limbs that was their best friend.

"Earth to Danny. You in there?" She prodded him with the tip of her bat. "Phantom?"

Danny raised his head and threw her a withering look. "Did I just get thermosed?"

"Yep."

Danny turned his glare onto Tucker who smiled innocently. "Your thermos privileges are revoked."

"Hey! I wasn't expecting you to fly up like that!" Tucker protested. "I was aiming for the horse."

With a roll of his eyes, Danny opened his mouth to retort, but a new and wholly unfamiliar voice cut in before he could.

"You know, for the alpha of your group, you are remarkably easy to capture, ghost child."

Sam swore. Tucker nearly jumped out of his skin and whirled around, holding the thermos in front of himself like a weapon. Floating perhaps fifteen feet above them was a giant robot. A ghost robot. With green flaming hair. The hunter.

He balked.

"Perhaps I ought to reconsider," the hunter ghost went on, sounding almost thoughtful. He turned his eyes—the same vicious, ectoplasmic green as Danny's all the way through—to Sam. "The female seems to be the worthier challenge."

Tucker couldn't see Sam's expression but from the acid in her words, he could take a good guess. "Excuse me? _Female_?"

The ghost actually paused to reconsider. Gears whirred as he tilted his 'head' to the side. "Did I misjudge? Are you not a female of your species? It can be difficult to tell with humans sometimes."

Tucker licked his lips. The ghost was distracted. This was his chance. The thermos was still on release mode but if he could just switch it back to capture…he could get the ghost. The switch was near his pinkie. He couldn't risk turning the thermos around to get a better angle, movement would only attract attention, but if he could play it off as natural shifting….

"Uh, dude," said Danny's voice from somewhere behind him, high enough that he must have lifted off the ground. "It's actually kind of rude to refer to girls as 'females'. Especially to their faces."

"It…is?"

"Yeah, come on, man, even I know that. It's demeaning."

The ghost blinked, processing this, then its strange features which were clearly metallic like the rest of him yet malleable like flesh and muscle, shifted into a frown. "Regardless, I believe she would make a far worthier opponent than you, boy."

"Opponent?" Danny scoffed. "You didn't seem to care about a fight when you shot me with that net earlier."

"Oh, that was merely to get your attention. I expected you to put up a fight but instead you turned tail and fled!" The ghost shook his head. "A pitiful display."

"Was it fleeing? Or was it regrouping? Besides—Shulker, right?"

" _Skulker_ ," the ghost snapped.

"My bad, Skulker. You want to talk about pitiful? You lured my friends away and used a _trap_ to catch me instead of facing me head on in a fair fight."

"Yeah!" Tucker agreed and Skulker narrowed his eyes at him. Tucker flinched, shifting the thermos in his shaking hands. It worked, because Skulker's attention immediately returned to the others and Tucker's thumb was now on the switch.

"A fair fight, you say?" Skulker mused. Then he threw his head back and laughed like some sort of cartoon villain. It was almost cringe-worthy but it was also the perfect cover for the sound of the switch flipping back to capture mode.

"Very well, ghost child! If it is a fair fight you want then I, Skulker, Ghost Zone's greatest hunter, will give you one! But know this, _boy_ , should I gain the upper hand, I will not hesitate to subdue you by any means necessary. And if your _friends_ interfere," he threw a nasty look in Tucker's direction, "I will not hesitate to dispose of them with extreme prejudice, and rest their pelts at the foot of my bed."

"Okay," said Sam, "that's just gross."

Skulker only grinned. (Seriously how was a robot doing that?)

"Sam. Can I borrow the bat?" Danny asked in a clipped voice.

"Ab-so-lutely."

Tucker heard her toss it through the air and the metallic thump of Danny catching it. "Alright then, Skulker." His voice was like ice. "You and me, right now. You can use whatever you got, I can use whatever I got. If I win, you go away. Agreed?"

Skulker nodded. "Agreed. And when I win, you will spend the rest of your life in a cage on display among the rest of my collection."

Then he dropped into a crouch, legs spread and panels began to open across his forearms, biceps, and shoulders. From them emerged an array of guns, rocket launchers, arrow launchers primed with arrowheads the size of one of Tucker's hands. Skulker bared two rows of white metal teeth in a predatory grin.

"Oh that's bullshit!" Sam shouted.

"Uh…Specter?" Danny called, voice wavering.

"Yep!" Tucker replied and smashed his finger into the thermos's trigger. It hummed to life. Skulker only had a split second to look his way in surprise before the ensnaring blue light shot towards him.

"What the—!"

The light caught him but he must've known what the thermos would do because he immediately ignited some sort of jetpack on his back leaned against the pull. It was enough to resist but not enough to escape. Tucker sucked in a sharp breath and tightened his grip on the thermos as it began to heat beneath his hands. The flames burned brighter, the ghost grunted, and slowly he began to move away from the thermos.

Danny flew over their heads and dove down behind Skulker, beyond the reach of the thermos. "Oh no you don't!" Tucker heard him shout over the roar of the rockets, followed by a metallic clang, and suddenly the robot was hurtling towards the thermos.

"CHEAT!" Skulker howled. "THIS WILL NOT BE FORGIVEN! I WILL HAVE YOUR HIDES FOR THIIIIIIIS!"

Tucker slammed the cap on the thermos and let out and let out a breath of air he didn't know he'd been holding. " _Holy—!"_

Sam tackled him from behind, throwing her arms around his shoulders. "God I was hoping you were doing what I thought you were doing!"

Tucker grinned proudly and leaned in Danny's direction, extending one arm out beside his head. "I'm sorry? What was that about my thermos privileges being revoked?"

Drifting through the air towards him. Danny rolled his eyes but he was grinning regardless. "Reinstated! Nice job, Tuck!"

"Dude, were you really gonna 1v1 him if I hadn't gotten the thermos ready?"

Danny reached up to rub the back of his neck, sheepish. "Uh, maybe? I thought I could at least dent his armor or something. I wasn't expecting all the guns and stuff. But I figured Sam would at least jump in to kick his butt if things got dicey."

"You bet I would've," Sam growled. "What a prick. And what was all that about our _pelts_?"

"At the foot of his bed," Tucker added, tossing the thermos lightly into the air and catching it. "Can't forget that part."

Danny and Sam's eyes followed the thermos up and down as he continued tossing it. Without a word, Danny reached out and caught it before Tucker could. "Yeah how about we _don't_ tempt fate tonight?" he suggested and handed Sam both the thermos and her bat.

"So, that's two ghosts down," said Sam as she returned each item to its place on her body. "Now we just have to find the wolf."

Tucker pressed his lips together thoughtfully and flew about ten feet into the air. He spotted the treeline about five hundred yards to the west. Covering roughly half of the entire park, those woods were plenty big enough for a single ghost to hide in, and tempting besides for a wolf. For Tucker, not so much. He'd never been a fan of them and only ever went in when one of his parents wanted to go on a nature hike or something, which wasn't often. If they were lucky, they'd find it quickly.

Sam and Danny drifted up on either side of him and the three of them regarded the woods quietly for a few moments.

"So, how exactly are we supposed to find a wolf ghost in all that?" Danny wondered aloud. "Did we ever figure that out?"

Tucker shook his head. They didn't even know the wolf was in there to begin with. It could be _anywhere_ by now, even beyond the city limits.

"Well, it _is_ a wolf," Sam pointed out. Then she drew in a breath, cupped her hands over her mouth, and let out a long, loud, " _AWOOOOOOOO!"_

Tucker and Danny glanced at each other, shrugged, and then followed suit. Their voices carried far, echoing through the park—

(and beyond, they would later realize)

After ten seconds of howling, the three teenagers feel silent. Listening. Waiting. And then, not far to the north, came a reply. Sam exhaled a laugh and held her hands out to her sides for some high-fives, which the boys enthusiastically gave.

"Come on!" Danny cried and they dove for the woods.


	7. Here For the Boos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dash slammed his hand on their table so hard the whole thing rattled ominously. The chatter around them died as heads swiveled towards the commotion. Tucker jumped in his seat and began shoving papers, books, and napkins indiscriminately into his bag, but Danny remained frozen in his seat. Sam leaned forward, every inch of her absolutely oozing a challenge, daring Dash to make a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im gonna run out of puns eventually then where will we be o_o"

By Monday, news of the park had spread through the entire teenage population of Amity Park and a good portion of the young adult population as well. Someone had managed to snap a photo of a weird blur of light in the sky and it had been shared hundreds of times through text, IMs, chatrooms, MySpace, a disgustingly long email chain, and half a dozen conspiracy blogs. As the photo spread, so, too, did stories from people who lived near the park who were awoken by the sounds of unearthly neighing and, later, howling. One person claimed to have seen multiple little lights zipping around the park.

It wasn't quite the talk of the school but none of the half-ghosts could go an hour without hearing at least something about it. They weren't concerned, exactly. They had no intention of keeping their existence a secret and they knew word would get out eventually, but it was still strange hearing people talk and speculate. Even more so since one was even close to being right.

Aliens was were? a popular theory. Government involvement was another. Apparently, one email chain was dead set on convincing everyone the lights were angels and the noises were demons they had defeated. Not one mention of ghosts except an offhand comment that maybe the park was haunted. Then there were the skeptics. Many were inclined to believe in rational explanations like flashlights, loudspeakers, and teenagers out past curfew. And some people just thought the whole thing was just a hoax and none of it happened period.

Danny and Jazz decided individually that they weren't going to so much as hint about it to their parents, which they thought would decrease their odds of finding out as neither Fenton parent really used the internet. Or had many friends. But apparently they had underestimated their parents' connections to the paranormal community because come Tuesday afternoon, not only did they Know About Friday but they were gearing up to go stake out the park. Danny sent a quick text to Sam and Tucker warning them to stay inside tonight.

His parents were at breakfast the next morning, groggy and discontent, lamenting how long it had taken them to find out about the sightings. All they'd managed to get were faint ectoplasmic readings on the playground, where the confrontation with Skulker had taken place.

"We'll need to be more aware of what's happening ourselves," Maddie resolved.

"And how are you going to do that, Mom?" Jazz asked, for once not sounding totally exasperated. "I didn't even know until Monday."

Jack nearly dropped his spoon. "You _knew_ and you didn't tell us?!"

"Why would we?" Danny asked, speaking for the first time since he'd sat down. "It just sounded like some people being weird on a Friday night a few weeks before Halloween. Even Sam didn't think it sounded interesting or spooky."

Maddie sighed heavily. "I understand, kids, but things are different now. You have to realize that."

Jazz rolled her eyes and started to return to her cereal but Maddie snapped her fingers in front of her face and she startled.

"Jasmine. I know you aren't very…enthusiastic about our work, but like it or not, you can't pretend this isn't happening. If you hear of anything strange, even if it's just rumors, you need to tell us!"

"Exactly!" Jack agreed with his usual aplomb. "How else am I going to test out all our new inventions?"

Danny met Jazz's gaze from across the table and he saw some of his own concerns reflected back at him. Their family was…tolerated by the community. Eccentric but harmless enough and given a wide berth when possible. He and Jazz had managed to skate by thus far but if their parents started making spectacles of themselves, that would all be over. Well, Jazz's insufferably sunny disposition and intellect would probably be enough to earn her a 'pass' so to speak, at least long enough for her to graduate and get the hell out of dodge. But Danny? No chance in hell. Elementary school had taught him that.

On the other hand, if enough people became convinced that there actually _were_ ghosts on the loose, his parents might actually be taken seriously. But the only way to convince people of that would be a big ghost fight or something and he didn't see that going well.

Either way, he was screwed.

He unenthusiastically delivered his report to his best friends on their way to homeroom. Sam's response was difficult to gauge, but Tucker seemed unbothered and Danny had to agree. Them detecting traces of ectoplasm was hardly newsworthy. But they would need to be careful from now on. Danny in particular would have to be prepared to let them know immediately if his parents decided to go out hunting or whatever. They suspected ghosts were loose in Amity Park but, for now, they had no solid evidence of anything.

After school, they headed to the Nasty Burger to eat and do the homework for their shared classes.

Tucker took a long swig of his Coke and set the cup down on the table. "So, do you think it's safe to go out tonight?"

Nibbling on the tip of his eraser, Danny stared at the question on his assignment. He knew this, he knew he did, he remembered Mr. Lancer saying the answer in class…but what—? Right, Tucker had asked a question. "Um…I'm not sure?" He glanced between them. "They were pretty tired this morning so I don't think they'll try going out two nights in a row. I'll have to check when I get home."

"You do that," Sam muttered then exhaled loudly. "I really don't like the idea of your parents just…being able to lock us down like that."

"Hey, better safe than sorry," Danny pointed out. "If there had been time we could've come up with a plan or something but it was so last minute."

"We should, actually," said Tucker.

"Should what?"

"Come up with a plan. That won't be the last time your folks go out like that and there's no guarantee you'll be able to warn us before they do. Like, what's the protocol if we run into them while they're out?"

Sam cleared her throat and looked around pointedly. "Maybe we don't talk about this _here?_ "

Danny twisted around in his seat, checking the nearby booths. No one was sitting directly behind or beside them yet—the perks of being social outcasts—but that didn't mean they wouldn't be overheard.

Tucker glanced around, too, then nodded. "Good point."

Sam merely inclined her head then stabbed at her salad with her fork. She said nothing as she took a bite and Danny turned his attention back to his homework.

"So," Sam said and Danny sighed but set his pencil down. "I know it's only Wednesday, but what are we doing this weekend?"

Tucker shrugged. "I don't know, does it matter?"

"It's probably going to be the last warm weekend of the year," she pointed out. "We should do something fun." She grinned at them, waiting for approval, but Danny merely reached for his drink.

Tucker took the bait. "Such as?"

"We never got around to hitting the amusement park's new roller coaster. I heard it has a free fall that'll take three years off your life expectancy!"

Danny rolled his eyes, swallowed a mouthful of soda, and replied, "Uh, Sam, aren't you forgetting something? Something we are very capable of doing ourselves any day of the week without paying admission or waiting in line?"

"Well, yeah, but, I don't know." She shrugged. "It's a different feeling and I bet it could still be fun."

Tucker shook his head. "No thanks. It costs forty bucks just to get in there, not to mention food and stuff." Leaning back in his seat, he rested his elbows on the back of it. "I'm not wasting that kind of money on the off-chance it doesn't even do it for us anymore."

"Hey, if you're tapped out, I can lend you the cash," she offered.

"Lend means 'repay' and repay is out of my reach. Right, Danny?"

"Uh…" Danny glanced between his friends nervously. He could probably get the money from his parents no problem but he stood by what he'd said before. "I don't really think—"

A cry rose up from a gathering of Casper High students on the other side of the restaurant and spared Danny from having to answer. The three of them turned to see what the commotion was and spotted Dash Baxter handing out light purple cards to every member of the crowd. Danny groaned in realization and slumped forward, propping his chin up on his fist. In the wake of everything that had been going on, he'd completely forgotten the annual parties Dash had been throwing since seventh grade. Though he'd never been invited to one, he'd always heard they were such a hit that even _high schoolers_ turned up, and when you were in middle school, that was about as big of a deal as being invited to a high schooler's party yourself.

Sam twisted around in her seat with a look of disgust, which softened a little when she spotted Danny. "C'mon, Danny, it's not _that_ big of a deal."

"Debatable."

"Why don't we get invited to the really cool parties?" Tucker asked as if either of them had an answer. "We've got style, charm, good looks—at least I do, anyway."

Sam scoffed. "Dream on. On the social circuit, we're completely invisible."

Sensing an opportunity, Danny sat straight up. "You might say we're—"

"No."

"—like ghosts."

"Danny, _no_."

"Danny, _yes_."

Tucker sighed dramatically. "Ten bucks says that's the reason we don't get invited to parties."

"Hey!"

Tucker opened his mouth to reply but then his eyes widened in surprise and he cleared his throat significantly. Danny and Sam turned to seewhat he was looking at, only to realize that Dash was coming their way. And looking right at them. Sam turned away, hands curling into fists on the table, and gave Danny a pointed glare, but he didn't look away from Dash. There had to be a reason he was coming over with invitations still in his hands. And sure enough, Dash stopped at their table.

"Uh, hey, Dash," Danny said hesitantly.

"Yeah, whatever," the jock replied and shoved an invitation into Danny's face. His hands shot up to grip the piece of paper before he even fully processed what was happening. "Make sure your sister gets that."

Danny blinked down at the little piece of paper which declared itself to be an invite to _Da Dash Bash_. His brain caught up to him after a moment. "M-my sister? Wha—"

"Couldn't catch her before she left after school. Make sure she gets it and nobody gets hurt."

"Wait, you're inviting _Jazz?_ To a party?"

"Duh, Fenturd." With that, Dash spun on his heel and started to walk away.

"What about us?" Danny blurted out.

Dash threw them a withering look over his shoulder. "My house has a strict policy against twinks, geeks, and freaks."

"Gotta be hard considering you live there," Sam commented dryly.

He whipped around. "The hell'd you say?"

Anyone else might have been intimidated, but Sam's answering smirk was borderline predatory. "You heard me."

Tucker made a quiet noise in the back of his throat and began gathering up his homework. Danny was inclined to agree with his assessment of the situation but it wasn't like they could make a break for it now. Even if he somehow could make it out of the booth and past Dash without getting snatched up, he couldn't leave Sam to her fate. She was tough as nails in her own right, but Dash had at least fifty pounds of pure muscle on her and her powers wouldn't do her much good here.

Dash slammed his hand on their table so hard the whole thing rattled ominously. The chatter around them died as heads swiveled towards the commotion. Tucker jumped in his seat and began shoving papers, books, and napkins indiscriminately into his bag, but Danny remained frozen in his seat. Sam leaned forward, every inch of her absolutely oozing a challenge, _daring_ Dash to make a move.

"You wanna say that to my face, Manson?" Dash growled and, oh _hell,_ Sam wasn't backing down.

Danny had to do something. Now. "Dash—"

"HEY!" came a furious shout from behind the counter. "If you kids got a problem or something, you go on and take that shit outside, we ain't doing this on my shift!"

"Yeah, Dash," Sam drawled. "You're making a scene."

"Listen you little—"

"Outside!" shouted the manager. "Or I'll call the cops!"

The threat of police seemed to snap Sam out of…whatever _that_ was. The moment Dash turned away, her eyes flicked to Danny and Tucker and she jerked her head towards the door. Without a word, she snatched up her backpack, shoved her pencil into her textbook and slammed it shut. Danny grabbed his backpack, their tray, and the three of them quickly exited their booth. Dash watched them go with gritted teeth but he made no move to stop them.

"What the hell, Sam!?" Tucker demanded the moment the door shut behind them. "What in the _actual hell_?"

Sam sputtered something unintelligible, frantically tugging on the zipper of her backpack.

Whether it was some sort of ghost instinct or just a good ol' human gut feeling, something told Danny to look over his shoulder. Dash had gathered a few of his buddies and they were marching towards the door, and even from this distance Danny could see they were coming for blood. "Crud." He grabbed both his friends by their elbows and began pulling them around the back of the building. "Time to go!"

"Oh, no, I am _not_ running from Dash!" Sam objected, tugging against his hold.

But Danny wouldn't budge and continued hauling her and Tucker towards safety. If they could just get behind the dumpsters, they could turn invisible without anyone seeing. "And you're also not about to fight half the football team in the Nasty Burger parking lot! Now let's. GO."

Sam's only further protest was something that sounded like a growl in her throat and she let herself be pulled away. Dash shouted their names as they were ducking around the corner but they didn't stop. They ducked behind the dumpsters to turn invisible but Danny didn't wait around to watch the jocks arrival. He jumped into the air and, to his immense relief, Sam lifted off the ground as well. The three of them flew away, leaving the football players to stew in their fury and confusion. There would be a reckoning for this, of that Danny was certain.

They landed in an alley a few blocks away from the Nasty Burger, turned visible, then strolled out onto the sidewalk. Apart from a few cars going up and down the street, they were alone.

"Are you out of your mind, Sam?!" Tucker exploded. "Why'd you goad Dash like that? There's no way he's gonna forget this by tomorrow."

"Probably not," she agreed, nowhere near concerned enough for the situation, in Danny's opinion. "But Dash doesn't scare me."

"Yeah, 'cos you're not the one he's gonna wail on for this," Danny snapped.

Sam at least had the decency to look contrite. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't think—I didn't mean—"

Danny shook his head. It wasn't _fine_ but she couldn't control what Dash did. "But seriously, Sam, what was that? You've clapped back before but that was weird."

"I don't know what came over me, honestly, I was just…" she trailed off, frowning, and lifted her eyes skyward. "I got pissed off."

"You were practically daring him to pick a fight," Tucker retorted. "I'd say that's a little more than 'pissed off'."

Sam could only shrug. "He could've given Jazz the invitation tomorrow. He just wanted to be a jerk and rub it in. I saw an opportunity and I took it. And you know what? _Fuck_ Dash, okay?"

Both boys' heads swiveled towards her in surprise.

"No really!" Sam insisted, incensed. Maybe it was a trick of the evening light, but her ponytail almost seemed to flicker like a flame. "Fuck him and his stupid party! There's nothing we could do at his house that we can't do at mine. Nothing worth doing, anyway. And we'd have more fun because it'd be just us."

Danny felt his jaw drop in surprise. "Your…house?"

Sam darted in front of them, arms folded across her chest, stopping their procession dead in its tracks. "Yeah. My house. This Saturday, you're both coming to _my house_. My parents won't be home and my grandma won't bother us. We're gonna watch movies, have snacks, dance, paint our nails, and whatever the hell else you guys wanna do."

Tucker and Danny exchanged baffled looks. They'd never been to Sam's before. Any time they'd broached the subject, she'd outright refused to let them over, for one reason or another.

"Was that an invitation or an order?" Tucker asked.

"Absolutely."

* * *

Assuming they could even make it to Saturday.

Danny felt nothing but dread as he approached Casper High on Thursday morning. He didn't see Dash or any of his cronies but it was only a matter of time. By now he had surely rationalized going after Danny in place of Sam, but even if he hadn't, Danny wouldn't sit by and let him do something horrible to her. He just really wasn't looking forward to what came after.

First period passed without incident, as did second, and the butterflies in Danny's stomach grew more agitated when he and Sam were forced to part ways with Tucker for third period. But it, too, passed without incident. After the bell, they regrouped with Tucker near his classroom, then made their way towards the doors which lead out to the lawn where they liked to spend their free period before or after lunch. Soon the weather would turn miserable and the lawn would be off limits until next spring, as no teacher wanted to sit outside and supervise them in the bitter cold.

They headed down freshman hall to deposit their books in their lockers on their way outside…only to find Dash leaning against his locker, waiting for them, if the predatory grin which crossed his face was anything to go by. Danny took a deep breath, and his eyes flicked across the students in the hall. He counted one, two, three, _four_ members of the football team. Star and Valerie were nearby, too, but who knew if they intended to get involved or were simply there for the show?

"Keep walking," Sam muttered to them. Danny gulped and clutched his supplies tighter to his side.

Dash waited until they were only a few feet away before sneering, "Hey, Manson."

"Yeah no," Sam replied flatly, her usual scowl firmly in place.

He pushed off from the lockers and sauntered directly into their path. For a moment, Danny considered simply turning intangible and going through him. Sam's stride didn't even falter, and she walked around him like he was little more than an obstacle in her path and not, say, a viper poised to strike. And strike he did.

When Sam walked around Dash, Danny chose to follow her rather than breaking ranks. Dash's hand whipped out between them so fast that only his inhuman reflexes saved Danny from crashing face-first into solid muscle. With a sharp inhale, he jerked his chin up and stopped dead in his tracks. Dash's arm hovered less than an inch below his chin, and the jock sneered at him. Sam whirled around at the sound.

"Goin somewhere, Fenton-y?" Dash taunted. Danny sputtered.

"Dash!" Sam snapped, drawing his attention from Danny. "While I'd _love_ to see whatever stupid shit you're planning on pulling, let me make one thing clear: if you lay so much as a finger on me, Danny, or Tucker, I will make you regret it."

Dash, Danny, and, well, everyone within hearing distance, really, gawked at her like she'd grown a second head. Or gone ghost.

"What the hell?" one of the jocks muttered.

Dash stared at her for a moment longer then burst out laughing, withdrawing his arm. Danny darted past Dash. Tucker followed after, flanking Sam on either side. She wasn't stupid and it wasn't like her to bluff with no way to back it up. Somehow, _she had something on Dash_.

Around them, some of Dash's friends were laughing along with him.

"Oh," Dash guffawed, "that's a good one." He opened his eyes, saw them standing in formation, and his smile turned ugly. He turned around, folding his arms across his chest, and leaned down towards Sam. "And how are you gonna do that, Manson?"

Danny risked a glance at Sam and had to press his lips together to stop himself from gasping. It was faint, maybe not even visible to humans yet, but her eyes had begun to take on a yellow hue. Dash was an idiot but there was no way he'd miss her eyes changing colors if this went on much longer.

Sam smirked and began to hum a tune Danny did not recognize but Dash…oh, Dash _did._ His eyes widened and to the utter shock of every single student watching, he took a step back. Tucker snickered. Whispering started up around them.

Glancing around quickly, Dash cleared his throat and his expression morphed into a scowl. "Yeah, right. As if anyone would believe that."

Her answering grin was all teeth and absolutely wicked. "Good thing I have pictures."

Dash's jaw clenched but he said nothing, nor did he make any move towards them, clearly trying to decide whether or not he wanted to call her bluff. After a moment, Sam took a step back, then another, and finally she turned and walked away. Danny and Tucker followed, and, to Danny's amazement, Dash let them go. The whispers followed them down the hall, fading only once they'd rounded the corner out of sight.

At that exact moment, Tucker burst out laughing. "Holy crap! How? How did you _know_?!"

Sam seemed to be trying to hold back her own laughter, though her eyes shone deviously. (And, thankfully, entirely in their natural shade.) "Dash isn't as subtle as he thinks he is."

Danny looked between them, utterly mystified. "I don't understand. What exactly do you have on Dash?"

"That song she hummed back there?" Tucker jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "It was the _My Rainbow Bears_ theme song."

Danny's eyes widened. "No."

" _Yes_ ," Sam hissed.

"How did you know? More importantly, how long have you been sitting on this?"

"Since summer. I caught Dash buying one of the bears at the store. Must've been limited edition or something because he forked over quite a bit of cash for it. He was trying to be all incognito, but I recognized him and snapped a few pictures when he wasn't looking. He never even knew I was there."

Danny was amazed and more than a little impressed. No wonder Dash had backed down. If something like that got out, it'd be like throwing a bucket of chum into shark-infested waters. Even if he managed to somehow disprove it, the blow to his reputation wouldn't soon fade.

"I've been saving them for something like this," she went on smugly. "I know it won't last forever, but I figure we'll get at least a week off."

Hmm. Yeah, better add _terrified_ to the list as well. Who knew what other deep dark secrets Sam was just waiting to expose?

"Glad you're on our side," Danny said.

They pushed the doors open and stepped outside into the warm midday sun. A handful of students were already seated at the picnic tables or on the lawn. The teacher on watch, a woman in her thirties that none of them had a class with, glanced at them as they walked down the stairs then turned her attention back to the lawn.

"Y'know," Tucker drawled as soon as they were far enough away, "Now that we've got powers, it'd be really easy for us to get dirt on that whole crowd. Think about it. We can go invisible, intangible, _and_ we can fly! All we'd have to do is pick our targets and I bet you within a day we'd have something on 'em."

"Uh, I don't know, Tuck," Danny said slowly. He glanced at Sam, who looked about as uncomfortable as he felt at the idea. "That doesn't seem…right."

Tucker frowned. "What do you mean? Those guys have been horrible to us for _years_. We should be allowed to haunt them."

Arriving at their preferred table, Tucker took a seat at the bench closest to them. Danny walked around the table to the other side and Sam followed.

"It just seems like a really shady thing to do," Danny explained as he sat down. "It's basically stalking, no matter what you call it. We're trying to be heroes, right?"

"All things considered, I know I don't really have a leg to stand on here," Sam said, "but I'm gonna have to agree with Danny on this one."

"Oh, come on Sam. If the roles had been reversed, Dash wouldn't have hesitated to out you to the entire school that _day_. We wouldn't be doing it to be mean, we'd be…." He paused, lips twisting thoughtfully as he sought a way to justify it. "Acquiring insurance." Danny frowned and Tucker let out an exasperated sigh. "Come on, Danny. You can't tell me you don't like the idea of getting Dash off your back for the rest of high school."

"You mean until people figure out there's no way for us to know the things we know without literally stalking them or breaking and entering," Sam pointed out.

Tucker folded his arms with a loud sigh and scowled. "I still think they'd deserve it," he muttered but didn't argue further.

She might not have thrown the chum to the sharks, but Sam sure as _hell_ poked the hornet's nest with her little stunt. By the time lunch was over, every single kid who'd been invited to Dash's party seemed to be aware that they hadn't been. Oh, no one came at them directly, and Dash certainly didn't make a reappearance, but suddenly they were being jostled a little more than usual during passing period. Accidental bumps, normally unavoidable in school halls, were too frequent to be anything but deliberate. Popular kids, or anyone who might be considered on the fringes of the group, were making a point of looking at them while whispering behind hands or laughing loudly.

And it continued on Friday, as well.

Danny could ignore the jeering, the pointed looks, and the elbowing. He'd dealt with worse. But what he couldn't stand was the _whispering._ Everywhere they went, alone or together, the whispering seemed to follow in the background. It was annoying. The last thing he wanted though was for people to realize they were getting to him, so he kept his head down and purposefully avoided searching for the source of the whispering.

On the way to third period, Kwan decided to barrel past Danny so fast that he lost his grip on his supplies and they went tumbling to the floor. Sam stopped to help him gather his things and Danny's ears fair burned from embarrassment under the whispering, which had swelled in intensity. As a result of the whole thing, they were almost late to class. The teacher was engrossed in a conversation with a pair of students at the front of the room and didn't even notice Danny and Sam slip in mere seconds before the bell. They took their seats in the second to last row and unpacked their supplies. Sam tore out a blank page from her notebook, scribbled a message, and slipped it to Danny just as their teacher called the class to order.

_When we were picking your stuff up, there were only two people still in the hallway. Who was whispering?_ _ Where's it coming from? _

Danny's jaw nearly hit the floor. He glanced at Sam's intense expression and pressed his lips together. Thinking back on it, she was right. The whispers might've died down as they left the scene of the crime, so to speak, but they hadn't truly stopped until they entered the classroom. The only people out there had been fellow stragglers, certainly not anyone who would bother to stop and gossip. That really only left one option, didn't it?

_How is it,_ he thought to himself, as he scribbled down his reply to Sam, _that my life has gotten to the point where 'ghosts' is actually a valid answer?_

He slipped her the note when their teacher was writing on the board and out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod minutely.

When they met up with Tucker after class, they filled him in on their realizations as they made their way towards the lawn. Like yesterday, they headed for freshman hall to drop off their stuff, hopefully without any interruptions this time. As they rounded the corner, the whispering swelled once more.

"You hear that, right?" Danny asked his best friends. They nodded. He looked up and down the hallway. Most of the kids were busy at their lockers or chatting with friends like everything was normal and there weren't voices whispering loud enough to be audible even over the din.

Wait…no. Danny grabbed his friends by their arms and stopped dead in his tracks. He frowned, squeezing his eyes shut, and strained his ears. Not voices, plural. A _single_ voice, whispering the same word over and over, echoing and overlapping endlessly with itself.

_Bullies…bullies…bullies…!_

Danny sucked in a sharp breath, eyes flying open to see Sam and Tucker staring at him with identical concerned expressions. "I think," he muttered, letting go of them, "it's saying 'bullies.'"

Sam furrowed her brow and then closed her eyes. After a few, long moments, her eyes snapped open once more. "I hear it, too."

Tucker folded his arms, seeming to take their word for it. "A ghostly disembodied voice, audible only in the halls, especially this one, talking about bullies…." His eyes suddenly widened and he gasped. "Holy—you don't think the legend of Locker 724 is real do you?"

Sam gasped, too, but Danny merely frowned. "The what now?"

Tucker threw him a withering look. "Hello? Locker 724? How do you _not_ know the legend of Locker 724?"

"Uh. What?"

He heaved a sigh, grabbed Danny by the bicep, and pulled him down the row of lockers until they reached 724. He recognized it immediately, of course. Casper High's lockers were hardly immaculate but 724 was weathered and rusty, its paint job faded and heavily chipped. No one had bothered to maintain this singular locker in a very long time, never mind actually used it. He'd noticed it on the first day but considering everything else that had been going on at the time, he hadn't really bothered to learn why. Or care.

Danny glanced between the locker and his friends, who were eyeing it like it had teeth, and he almost might've thought they were crazy if he couldn't hear the voice clearer than ever before.

"Bullshit," Sam whispered.

"C-can we get out of here?" Danny stammered. "This is freaking me out."

"How have we never heard this before?"

Tucker shrugged and made a noise of confusion. "How should I know? Maybe because he's never spoken before?"

"Whoa whoa wait." Danny held up his free hand. " _He_?"

Tucker heaved a sigh. "Seriously. Danny. How do you _not_ know? Locker 724 used to be owned by a kid named Sydney Poindexter back in the '50s. Dude was the victim of more cruel pranks than anyone in the history of Casper High School. Apparently, picking on him was a graduation requirement."

As he spoke, Danny's eyes flicked to the dilapidated locker in front of them. If he didn't know any better, he'd say the whispering had quieted. Like it knew what Tucker was talking about.

Tucker followed his gaze and frowned at the locker. "He got stuffed into his locker so many times, it's believed his spirit still inhabits it to this very day. Or so the story says."

They regarded the locker in silence for a long moment. The whispering continued around them but the words had begun to change. Danny furrowed his brow as he strained to make out what the whispers were saying, but all he could catch were snatches of words, except for one, which seemed clear as day.

_Hello?_

Danny shuddered. Oh god. Was there really the ghost of some poor dead kid trapped inside? What kind of hell had his high school years been for him to end up here of all places? God, had he _died_ in there?

"Uh, Tucker?"

Danny blinked, coming back to himself at Sam's worried tone. Tucker had taken a step forward and his hand gripped the dial on Locker 724, like he was about to try unlocking it.

"Hey, guys, get to where you're going!" a teacher's voice called down the hall. "Bell's in one minute."

Danny let out a huff and tugged on Tucker's arm. "Come on," he muttered, jerking his head in the opposite direction of the teacher. "Let's get out of here."

"Can't you hear him?" Tucker asked.

"Not really," Sam replied at the same time Danny said, "Sort of."

Sam glanced between them and frowned.

"He kept repeating three numbers, 20-9-15. I think it's the combination. He wants to be let out."

Danny shook his head. "Tuck, I don't think—"

"Get a move on!" the teacher called.

Danny sighed and raised his hand at the teacher in acknowledgement. "Come on, guys," he hissed. "We can hide in the bathrooms and go invisible."

With an acknowledging wave at the teacher watching them, the three headed down the hall like they were heading for the lawn. Luckily for them, a pair of bathrooms were situated just around the corner from the outside door, and they slipped inside their respective ones without a word. Danny glanced around to make sure no one was in there then turned invisible. Tucker followed suit. The bell rang not long after and Tucker and Danny exchanged glances before slipping out of the bathroom to join Sam. The teacher was already gone when they made it back to freshman hall and each quickly returned to their lockers to stow their stuff. The whispering continued all the while.

They met back up in front of Locker 724 and Sam, ever the pragmatic one, had brought her Thermos along. They stood invisibly a few feet from the locker, eyeing it with varying levels of wariness.

"I don't know about this," Danny muttered. "Sure, he's trapped, but what if someone did it purposefully? If this kid was bullied to death or something, he's probably a vengeful spirit."

"Or he's a tormented soul that's been stuck in a locker for fifty years," Tucker retorted. "Either way, there's three of us and one of him, and Sam has a thermos."

"Maybe we should wait until school's out," Sam suggested.

Tucker scoffed. "Come on, Sam. I don't think just opening the door is gonna do anything. Kids probably break in _all_ _the time_. If the door was the only thing keeping him in there, he'd have been out years ago."

Without waiting for permission, Tucker turned visible and reached for the dial once more. Still invisible, Danny and Sam exchanged nervous looks and Sam uncapped her thermos. They turned visible as Tucker tried the latch. It creaked far too loudly in the empty hallway and the whispering abruptly ceased. Danny heard Tucker suck in a breath before pulling the door open. It groaned as it opened, the hatches rusty and warped from years of disrepair.

Danny and Sam crowded up behind Tucker to peer inside over his shoulders. The inside of Locker 724 was just as worn as the outside. Faded, dirty, and there was even a spiderweb in one of the corners. Ick. But the real oddity was the mirror affixed to the back of the locker. How long had it been there? Had it been Sidney Poindexter's?

"Whoa," Sam murmured.

Wordlessly, Danny reached over Tucker's shoulder and pressed his fingers to the mirror's surface. His fingers tingled, and he pulled away with a hiss of surprise.

"Danny?"

"I felt something…."

Tucker reached out to touch the mirror himself and Danny felt him shiver. Sam's arm snaked in alongside his to touch it, too, and she gasped.

"Something's definitely going on here," she declared. "It feels… _alive_."

"Or something," Tucker muttered with an expression of intense concentration directed at the mirror. "Are you, uh, are you in there, Sidney?"

Nothing. Not even the barest hint of a whisper. Danny frowned and leaned away from Tucker. This was sketchy as _hell_.

"Sidney?" Tucker tried again. "Or, uh, somebody else? Hello? We're here to help. I-if you want it, I mean."

"Annnd of course nothing's happening," Sam drawled, taking a step back, and folding her arms. "I swear, Tucker, if you let him out just by opening the locker…."

"I didn't," Tucker replied, sounding less sure of himself than before. He tapped his finger against the mirror. "Come on, Sidney, dude, if you're there, give us a sign or something."

He tried to wedge his fingers beneath the mirror, as if intending to remove it, but the mirror didn't even so much as twitch. Frowning, Tucker reached in with both hands and tried to pull the mirror out. It didn't budge, but a quiet hiss whipped through the air.

"Okay. Weird tingly mirror, fused to the wall, and hissing. That's normal," Danny deadpanned. Then he heard the footsteps. He turned his head towards the sound. Multiple people, heavy footfalls, walking fast. "Someone's coming!" he hissed.

Tucker leaned around the locker door to look. "What do we do?!" he whispered frantically.

"Hide!" Sam replied at the same volume then turned invisible, Danny followed. Tucker eased the door closed but didn't shut it all the way and disappeared as well.

Seconds later, a group of three boys in letter jackets rounded the corner. In the front was an upperclassman that Danny couldn't name. The other two were Dash and Kwan. The upperclassman lead them right to Locker 724 and Danny promptly turned intangible, floating into the air. He could see the vague forms of Sam and Tucker follow suit.

"This one here," the upperclassman said, pointing at the locker, then stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Oh, yeah, this piece of shit," Dash drawled. "They were staring at it?"

"Yeah," the upperclassman replied. "Looked kind of freaked, too."

Dash let out a quiet 'huh' then peered closer. Without a word, he stepped around the other jocks, reached for the door Tucker had left slightly ajar, and pulled it open. His eyes flitted around the empty locker intently before settling on the mirror in the back.

"Weird," he declared after a moment.

"Hey so, uh," Kwan began nervously, "but isn't this locker supposed to be haunted?"

Dash let out a derisive snort. "You actually believe that crap?"

"No! But y'know, Fenton might. O-or Manson."

Dash didn't look convinced. He reached inside the locker and tapped his finger against the mirror. The whispering resumed, louder than ever, with a decidedly aggressive undertone, but Dash gave no indication that he could hear it. None of them did. But the hairs on the back of Danny's neck bristled. Something was about to happen. He could _feel_ it.

"Well, they're not here," the upperclassman drawled, pulling his hands from his pockets. "I'm going to lunch. Later, guys."

"Later, man," Dash replied with a wave, not looking away from the locker.

"Later, thanks," Kwan added as the upperclassman walked away, leaving the two freshman alone with the three invisible half-ghosts and a pissed off locker spirit. Kwan nudged him. "Dude, c'mon. There's nothing here."

Dash frowned and his arm moved. Danny couldn't see what he was doing from the angle he was floating at but then suddenly the voice, which had only ever whispered before, swelled into a roar.

**_NO!_ **

It may have not reached Dash and Kwan's ears but the startled gasp which burst from Danny's mouth sure did. They startled then whipped their heads toward the sound, eyes darting around the empty hallway first in alarm and then confusion.

"You heard that, right?" Kwan asked.

"Yeah," Dash replied, taking a step back from the locker, clutching the mirror in his hand.

One moment Tucker's faint form was hovering in Danny's peripheral vision and the next he was down at Dash's level and tugging on the mirror out of his grip.

"Hey what the fuck!?" Dash yelped as the mirror was yanked out of his hands by an invisible force. Kwan swore and literally leaped backwards. They gawked at the mirror with mounting horror for a few tense seconds and then Tucker turned it invisible.

Kwan let out a scream of terror and was halfway down the hall before the sound faded. Dash bolted after him, screeching, " _WHAT THE FUUUUCK!?"_

A door up the hallway flew open and a teacher darted out into the hallway. Another door opened half a second later and then another and another, all seeking the source of the screaming.

"Guys," Sam hissed, "time to go!"

She did not have to tell them twice. They shot through the ceiling, up through the second floor, then the third. Sam must have transformed somewhere between floors because when they returned to visibility outside, she was Wraith. Danny and Tucker landed on the ground but Sam remained hovering in the air.

"That was stupid," Sam said without preamble.

"You're one to talk," Tucker retorted. "Besides, who's gonna know? Everyone's just gonna think it was the locker ghost. And did you see their _faces_?! Totally worth it!"

Danny was inclined to agree but before he could voice his opinions on the matter, the mirror in Tucker's hands began to glow a vicious green. The whispers resumed with a vengeance, rising in volume as the glow swelled in size, coalescing into a single, nasally shout.

" _ **BULLY!"**_

Tucker let go of the mirror with a startled cry but rather than plummeting to the ground, it remained floating in midair. An explosion of light erupted from the mirror and the three teenagers threw their hands up to shield their eyes. When the light faded, they were not alone.

He was their age, maybe a little older, skinny as a board, with a long, narrow face, and glasses. He looked like he had just stepped out of a TV show from the fifties in more ways than one. His clothing style was dated and, for a word, nerdy…and he was entirely monochrome. No hint of the ectoplasmic green which had comprised at least one aspect of every ghost they had seen thus far, not even in his eyes. But he was very much a ghost, his transparent, floating form could attest to that. As could the mirror which he held firmly in his hands.

All four teenagers exchanged shocked looks but it was Sidney who found his voice first. His head whipped from side to side and his lips parted in a wide, buck-toothed grin. "Hey! I'm free! Finally, I—" He paused then his head swiveled towards them and his eyes narrowed. "You. You were messing with those poor kids."

"S-Sidney…Poindexter?" Tucker asked tentatively.

"Yeah, that's me. What's it to ya?"

"Holy shit," Sam whispered.

"Wait a minute." Sidney rose higher into the air so he was eye-level with Sam. "You're a ghost, too. Why are you helping them bully kids?!"

"We weren't!" Danny argued, drawing the ghost's gaze. " _Those_ guys are the bullies. They were after us when they showed up at your locker."

" _They're_ the bullies?" Sidney repeated with a doubtful frown. "Then how come they were the ones who ran screaming?"

"Because we scared them off." Sam retorted, folding her arms. "Listen, I don't know how much you were able to see or whatever from your locker, but if you'd been paying attention at all during the school year so far, you'd know Dash and Kwan are assholes. I might not _agree_ with what Tucker did—" she shot Tucker a pointed look "—but they definitely deserved it."

Sidney turned his attention to Tucker, looking him up and down pointedly, but said nothing.

"Look," Danny said, holding his hands up in front of him in a placating gesture. "We don't want to fight."

"Fight?" Sidney repeated, blinking in surprise. "Who said anything about fighting?"

"Pretty much every ghost we've ever met has picked a fight," Sam replied.

"But you're just a kid, like us," Tucker pressed. "And we know a lot of bad stuff happened to you when you were alive, and that you've been stuck in that locker a long time."

Sidney cocked his head. "I wasn't in my locker, it's just where the doorway is. Or…was." He looked down at the mirror in his hands. "What year is it?" he asked suddenly.

"2004," Sam said.

"Two- _thousa—_ " Sidney stopped mid-word, eyes wide, and then abruptly let out a long, loud sigh, deflating. He drifted towards the ground. "So long. I can't believe after all this time no one ever threw it away."

"There's a whole legend-slash-ghost story thing with your locker," Tucker explained. "No one uses it. I don't think anyone had even opened it in years before we did."

"No," Sidney agreed, "it's been a long time. I knew time was passing but, gosh, fifty years…."

Sensing that they were no longer in any danger, Sam lowered herself next to the boys and transformed back. The flash of light startled Sidney and he had to do a double-take then gasped. "HOLY SOCKS!" He let go of his mirror with one hand to point at them. "Y-you! You're halfas!"

Danny stood up straighter. "What-as?"

"Halfas! Everybody in the Ghost Zone has been talking about you! You're half-humans, half-ghosts! Halfas! You have all our powers on the human plane and—and you…" He looked down at his mirror again.

_Halfas_ , Danny thought. _There's a name for us._

"And you let me out," Sidney finished. "Why would you let me out when all you do is throw ghosts back _in_?"

Tucker and Sam seemed to be reeling from the revelation just as much as Danny was. A few moments passed before Tucker shook his head and replied, "We just wanted to help you, dude."

"We're only throwing ghosts back because they've all been trying to hurt people," Danny added then tilted his head, trying to make eye-contact with Sidney. The ghost met his gaze and raised his head. "If you're going to do that, you have to go back to the Ghost Zone. One way or another."

"I…" Sidney looked down at his mirror again. Licked his lips. Looked at them, then at the sky, clear and blue, dotted with fluffy white clouds. The wind blew around them, rustling a few leaves which littered the roof, and the clothes of the three… _halfas_. Voices drifted up from the lawn where students passed their free period in idle conversations. "I don't…want to hurt anybody. But I don't want to go back. Not yet, anyway. There's not really…anything good for me in the Ghost Zone, you dig?"

Tucker let out a tiny, almost imperceptible laugh, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Word."

Sidney cocked his head. "W-word?"

"We dig."

The ghost's shoulders slumped in relief, and he grinned at them, showing off his too-large front teeth. He drifted down to stand on the rooftop in front of them. Tucking his mirror under one arm, he held out his other hand. "I'm Sidney," he said.

Tucker accepted the offer and shook the ghost's hand. "Tucker."

Sidney turned to Sam who shrugged lightly and said her name as she shook his hand. He turned to Danny last, offering his hand and a hopeful, expectant smile. Danny returned it and, for the first time in his life, shook a ghost's hand.

It was cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* friends friends friends friends friends 
> 
> I'm Wintermoth on tumblr and you're absolutely allowed to come yell at me about this story~


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